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WEDNESDAY, APRIL 04, 2007
You're Not Alone in Your Efforts to Lose Weight
Hi, my name is Michelle Fiordaliso. I am the Clinical Director of the Shrink Yourself Mastering Food Program. I am a psychotherapist and certified nutritional counselor.
At the risk of sounding like that old Hair Club for Men commercial, I don't just work at this company but I have had my own struggles with weight beginning when I was nine-years old. As a child I had a dream of being an actor. When I was nine, I met an agent who wanted to sign me. He suggested that I lose ten pounds. The very next day, I tried not to eat anything, until four o'clock when I found I was starving, and gave in and ate two Oreo cookies with a friend. Then there was the freshman fifteen, a thirty-pound weight gain when I had thyroid problems, and an eighty-pound weight gain when I was pregnant with my son. I called myself, "The Human Accordion," swelling and shrinking from time to time. Finally, I reached a place where I was so fed-up with a body that was constantly changing. I'm sure you're familiar with that place. I knew I had to do something different than diet and exercise. I had to change my relationship to food. Once I did this, following a sensible diet and exercise plan became much easier. Of course, I still worry about my weight, who doesn't, but it's an occasional thought not an every day, every meal obsession.
I am here to present you with links to the most up-to-date articles about Emotional Eating, to answer your questions, and to remind you that you are not alone in this journey to recover your power over food. I can promise you the place to start is by going inside and asking yourself certain questions. If I could wave a magic wand and take away this painful vicious cycle, I would. But we both know I can't. But what I can do, is share how I used the Shrink Yourself methods to put an end to this pattern, and help you find the plan that will work best for you.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 2:22:03 PM | 18 COMMENTS
SATURDAY, JANUARY 28, 2012
Why People Binge
"If I am all doped up on a food high, nothing else matters."
“When I feel inadequate, I eat... then I'm some body... I matter.”
“When I concentrate on what I am eating I don't have to deal with other emotions."
Do any of these statements sound like you? If you're a binge eater, you're not alone. It is something that millions of people struggle with. It is more common than either anorexia or bulimia.
There are two main reasons why people binge. One is to cope with painful feelings and create the illusion of feeling good, and the other is to feel "safe" or to shut out the world.
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The first thing a binge provides is something that I call the "Food Trance." The food trance is the mind numbing experience that makes you feel good for a little while. That little bit of relief feels worth it when you're faced with an uncomfortable situation, thought or feeling.
For some people, they'll even push off their feelings and "deal" with them later on by binging. I call this a delayed binge. You might be frustrated at work and spend the whole day thinking about what you're going to eat when you get home.
When your mind is screaming with unpleasant thoughts, you're willing to run into the comfort of food as a temporary safe-haven, anything for a few minutes of quiet. However, when you shut down your mind too many times with food, binging becomes a compulsion. That means your mind always believes it needs food to deal with stress. Once that happens, you can't control what you eat no matter how hard you try.
The second way that binging appeals to people, seems paradoxical on the surface. When the binge is over, you're filled with regret. Your mind plays a tape of how awful it was that you gave in to the binge. But that tape feels better (and more familiar) to your mind than the one that talks about the things you're afraid to face. The post-binge guilt gives you something else to think about.
Consider my patient Roxy, a 45 year old mother with three children. She told me about a frustrating day at the mall with her 16 year old daughter. Her response to the frustration was to binge on a whole box of donuts. She told me, "I was so mad at her, what else could I do?"
Roxy is very smart, but in spite of my prompting and questioning, she couldn't think of any other option but to binge. Her pattern of binging by stuffing down feelings with food was so deeply ingrained in her mind that it short-circuited her common sense. Binging felt like the only way to dial down her frustration and rid herself of angry thoughts toward her daughter. More than that, her guilt about the binge stopped her from feeling guilty about not being a good-enough mother.
If you're a binge eater you probably already know the painful cycle of desperately wanting to binge, giving in to a binge, feeling remorse after a binge, and then promising yourself a binge will never happen again. It is important to accept that there is a part of you that feels afraid to let go of the binging cycle, because you don't know what will happen if you don't have food to quiet your mind.
It is this emotional cycle and thinking trap that you need to understand before you can let go of the binging pattern. The first step is to understand how compulsive eating has been benefiting you. When you realize why you depend on binge eating, you'll be in a better place to let the pattern go and find better ways to deal with emotional hunger. Shrink Yourself will help you understand why you binge and more than that, it will give you the tools to stop.
Can you identify the primary thought, feeling or fear that triggers you to binge?
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 11:31:30 PM | POST A COMMENT
SUNDAY, JANUARY 22, 2012
The Secret Ingredient For Success
A patient came in the other day with the best advise I've ever heard!
"I realize now that I have to recognize my personal development issues as much as I have to pay attention to what I eat."
In all of my experience with the Shrink Yourself program, and with the patients that I have treated, I can tell you that this perspective is absolutely essential for overcoming emotional eating.
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I saw a patient recently who was suffering from a great deal of anguish about her binges. Even though she was in pain, she was also ambivalent about accepting help. I insisted we talk only about her ambivalence until we understood it.
Her greatest fear was that she would lose weight and try again to have a fulfilling romantic relationship. Of course there's nothing wrong with that. But for her it was very scary, because she was predicting that every romantic relationship would end in failure. She was sure she would suffer such great hurt that it would take her months or years to recover.
In this case, she has to acknowledge her "fear of success" in order to overcome her dependency on food.
She started her pattern of emotional eating because of her disappointments with previous relationships. She stopped trying and stopped learning and therefore, stopped growing. Now she has to pay attention to this area of her life. This is her personal development issue.
I am sharing this example so that you may find your own story. Think about your ambivalence. Ask yourself why you are afraid to succeed.
Is your ambivalence stopping you from starting this program?
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 9:54:19 PM | POST A COMMENT
SATURDAY, JANUARY 14, 2012
Are You Ready For A Warm Bath?
Just the other day a member asked me to explain, how taking a warm bath, was going to help her with her emotional eating habit that caused her to put on twenty pounds. I was puzzled at first, but then I remembered it was one of the items on a list in the second session about "what else" you could do when you feel emotionally overwhelmed.
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Taking a warm bath isn't the cure for emotional eating, but it is a way to give yourself some quiet time to think things over. And clear thinking IS the essential process for curing yourself of a food obsession.
There are dozens of other ways to stop and think, the simplest being to PAUSE, feel the present moment and then think about. It's important to interrupt the automatic quick reach for food that you might be using to stuff and numb yourself temporarily. Once you start stuffing it is too late to think. And you will not find the right solution, without thinking.
Whatever strategy works for you to stop the automatic behavior long enough to pause and collect your thoughts, is the right way. It can be a bath, a walk, a phone call, a mantra or even a game of peek-a-boo with a toddler.
When you pause and think, right before you are about to eat too much, it is an emotional wrestling match that greets you. There will be a tug-a-war between staying with your feelings long enough to get a realistic perspective on what is bothering you; and the impulse to numb yourself with food and bury what is bothering you as quickly as you can.
The purpose of the pause is to make you conscious of just this point in the process. This opens the door to the next insight, and the next one, and the next one after that!
The hard truth is, that as adults, we must face and deal with everything that surrounds us, whether we like it or not. And I know that fear and helplessness are strong emotions that can temporarily overwhelm us, and subvert us from using the most intelligent parts of our minds. Unfortunately, this only makes it that much harder to resolve the original issues. That’s why it’s important to take time out and view life’s challenges with a fresh perspective. This is what we can help you do inside the Shrink Yourself Program...
What are you going to “think about” in your next warm bath?
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 10:01:07 PM | POST A COMMENT
FRIDAY, JANUARY 06, 2012
Successful Resolutions for the New Year
We all make New Year's resolutions, and often these resolutions involve weight loss. However, many of us quickly lose traction before we achieve our objectives. In this week's blog I will answer the following 5 questions that will help you stay on track and reach your goals.
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1. What are the psychological and emotional reasons behind these failures?
2. What is the biggest mistake people make when making a resolution?
3. How do you set reasonable, healthy expectations when you resolve to lose weight or shape up at this time of year or any other time of year?
4. What kind of support should you seek to help you achieve your goals?
5. What's the most important thing you can do to improve your chances of success before you make a healthy lifestyle change?
1. What are the psychological and emotional reasons behind these failures?
The biggest factor by far is emotional or stress eating. If you are in the habit of over using food as a form of self medication when you're in distress (overwhelmed, anxious, angry, bored or lonely,) then you are emotionally dependent on food to regulate your emotions. The instant you make your New Year's resolution you are in conflict with yourself. Your resolve may be absolutely serious and very real at the moment but when the stresses of everyday life throw you into a tailspin, even the greatest motivations will be sacrificed in favor of restoring your emotional equilibrium. You think forward with your head but respond in the moment to your feelings.
Think of it this way. For most parts of your life you can simply do what you intend to do. You brush your teeth, go to the store, keep your appointments. There is little or no distance between the mental intention and the act of doing. When you resolve to lose weight, you are making a simple clear healthy choice. There aren't any valid reasons not to do it, so you expect and hope that your intention will carry the day. It doesn't work that way. When you begin to put that choice into action you discover that changing an eating pattern is a psychological piece of work.
There is another, probably hidden, part of you that does not really want to go along with your New Years resolution. Because food is so deeply rooted in family dynamics, when you change your eating habits, you disturb these early associations. Since food is every one's first form of love and safety, you can see how familiar eating habits can provide comfort even when they may not be healthy.
What unhealthy eating habit did you "inherit" from childhood?
2. What is the biggest mistake people make when making a resolution?
The biggest mistake people make is ignoring the emotional eating factor. You hope to override it with good intentions and strong motivations and a new program that is guaranteed to work this time. You may be embarrassed about your weight or worried about your health or just want to look better or move with more grace. These are all strong powerful motivations that will drive you for a while. In the commonsense world, these motivations should prevail and take you all the way to your goal.
But there is this other force inside you that will throw up a smoke screen of a thousand excuses in order to justify going back to those eating patterns that make you feel safe, patterns that have probably existed for decades, and maybe since childhood.
When you make a New Year's resolution to lose weight, you are setting yourself up for failure if you don't recognize and take into account the fact that your overeating habits are the adult form of a child's security blanket. The security blanket made the child feel safe, but it didn't make the child safe. The same with food.
The safety and psychological hiding place that over eating or binging provides is only an ILLUSION. Once you really understand this, you can change your eating habits and reach your weight goals. This is why 95% of diets fail. If you don't deal with it, your chances of being successful for very long are slim.
How does food make you feel safe?
3. How do you set reasonable, healthy expectations when you resolve to lose weight or shape up at this time of year or any other time of year?
You have to pay attention to reality, which means you'll need to start eating healthy, making sure not to put yourself in the position of feeling deprived which only sets up for the next failure. Don't think of losing weight as a contest to win, because that means you are sure to lose. Think of it as a decision to be healthy, and that it is your responsibility to create a program that works for you, and that you are the expert. Don't set an artificial weight goal to meet some event deadline.
Remember you are losing weight for you because that is the healthy thing to do, not to please others or to impress others. If you keep all that in mind, you'll be happy with a modest weight gain in the beginning that is tied directly to conscious healthy decision making. Once that is established, the weight will come off much faster than you can imagine. And don't rely on exercise to lose weight. You can undo an hour of vigorous exercise in two minutes eating junk food. You should exercise to be healthy and enjoy your body. To lose weight, you need to focus more on what you put and let into your body... physically, emotionally and mentally.
What negative emotional or mental energy are you currently "binging" on?
4. What kind of support should you seek to help you achieve your goals?
Surround yourself with people who support healthy eating, who enjoy eating right, and are proud of making good food choices. A good weight loss partner who thinks the way you do can be very useful. The most important support people are those who respect your need to be the one who makes the decisions, including indulging on special occasions without feeling guilty or like a failure. Stay away from those who want to tell you what to do.
Do you have a family member, friend or co-worker that will listen compassionately to your "story" as you experience the challenges of changing your eating habits?
5. What's the most important thing you can do to improve your chances of success before you make a healthy lifestyle change?
The most important thing you can do is be honest with yourself. If you are too distraught, scared of attempting to change your eating habits, just wishing and hoping but secretly sure you are going to fail, don't do it now just because it is a new year. But if you are tired of yo-yo dieting, and tired of being obsessed and controlled by food, and are really ready to start a new part of your life by understanding rather than avoiding your emotional life, then make a serious commitment to a program that can guide you safely, step-by-step, to that goal. When you decide to make a commitment, then stick with it by seeing it as a psychological growth adventure which just happens to give you the added benefit of getting rid of your cravings and compulsive eating.
How would you like to grow personally as an adult?
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 1:11:33 PM | POST A COMMENT
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 30, 2011
Another Year... Another Diet?
Studies have shown that only about 12% of New Years Resolutions are actually achieved.
And since statistics show that most diets fail over time, what makes for a successful New Years Resolution? Instead of yet another diet or setting a goal of losing weight, why not focus on getting to know yourself better...
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So what if your New Years Resolution was to understand and accept yourself more?
If you are overweight, you are probably an emotional eater, because being overweight means you are storing more fat than you need, and the only way to do that is to eat more than you need. When you eat more than you need you are not taking good care of your body. You certainly don't intend to be overweight and you certainly don't intentionally want to take poor care of your body, but your good intentions are not strong enough to carry the day for you. Your habit of using food for emotional relief or reward wins the day because you are not yet confident that you can handle your strong emotions and life stresses on your own.
In this sense, you have not yet achieved full ownership of your adult mind and body because you can't seem to carry out your good intentions to eat healthy, exercise more and lose weight. This means that there is a piece of personal development work necessary to do, in order to break the emotional eating habit.
Breaking the emotional eating habit is the only way to lose weight and keep it off, but to do that you have to be willing to deal with yourself honestly, which includes feeling your feelings and understanding your emotions and facing your problems.
If you are ready to be successful at achieving your weight loss goals, then it's time to make some personal changes and upgrade your self-esteem. The Shrink Yourself Program will help you address the real issues that trigger your emotional need to eat in a step-by-step way so you can prove to yourself that you can make, keep and benefit from whatever intentions you set for yourself.
And given that people are more likely to be successful when they make their goals public, and get support from others, then why not use the Shrink Yourself Community to help you get started on a new path of self love?
Care to share your New Year's Resolution here or on our Facebook Page?
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 9:20:44 PM | POST A COMMENT
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 23, 2011
Checking Out in Advance
Just the other day I heard a patient describe something about emotional eating that I had not noticed before. She said that she found herself "checking out" for the last several weeks, which meant she was binging in anticipation of a stressful event that was to take place soon.
Checking out meant to her that she was no longer pausing and thinking. She didn't want to even try to understand what her emotional hunger was all about. Usually she "checks in" with herself, is on top of what is going on, and quite able to limit and control her binge eating.
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Most of the time I hear patients describe eating episodes that happen AFTER something has upset or frustrated them or caused them to question themselves in a critical way. However, this time, my patient was having eating issues BEFORE the event occurred. It's as if she predicted that there was going to be a situation she couldn't avoid, that would make her feel so helpless and powerless that she would not be able to cope with it unless she comforted herself with food weeks in advance.
The anticipated event was a meeting she set up with her boss as a favor for two former classmates from a small town in the Midwest. She needed nothing from them. They were old friends of the family about her same age. When I asked her what was so disturbing about the anticipated visit that required her to eat in excess in order to cope with it, she said she imagined them coming into the office and looking at her and thinking what a loser she was for being overweight, even though her office and her position reflected her success in the world. She was ashamed of herself, and predicted that the shame she felt would come back at her in the form of their critical judgement.
She said she does this frequently. There's a cycle in her life. There are normal times, then there are these periods in which she just hunkers down in anticipation of a painful assault, eats her way through it, and then can go back to feeling normal and "checking in" again. During this "checking out" phase, when she binges-in-anticipation, she imagines that food and fat is a protective layer, a kind of psychic insulation that will soften the impact and the hurt of the attack she predicts is going to happen. Of course, nothing like what she anticipated actually happened. Her boss loved the meeting he had with them, everyone was cordial and her friends were quite appreciative, warm and friendly.
It's the anticipation of the unavoidable blow and the use of food and fat as a form of insulation and padding, that we need to pay more attention to here. The contrast between what she imagined would happen and what actually happened is stark. In order to help her hold on to this awareness I labeled her two realities as REALITY ONE and REALITY TWO.
REALITY ONE is what she could reasonably expect from what she knows about life and experience to happen, which is exactly what did happen. REALITY TWO is what we call in the Shrink Yourself Program, a "catastrophe prediction." When she checked out and binged for two weeks, to give herself imaginary padding and protection, she actually believed that REALITY TWO was the accurate version.
However, her behavior showed me that she was confused and wasn't sure whether REALITY ONE or REALITY TWO was the real truth... so she responded to both of them. She over ate for comfort when REALITY TWO, her fear, was the controlling factor. But she didn't cancel the meeting because she also believed in REALITY ONE, that it was going to be a successful event. If she had "checked in," she would have struggled long enough to diminish or eliminate the impact of her erroneous prediction and she would not have had to gain the 7 pounds that she did in anticipation of a catastrophe that didn't occur.
In the same session she told me that she asked for a raise. She is highly valued, has a critical position, and has been a long-term and loyal employee. She was anticipating, in her catastrophic thinking imagination, that the personnel director would wave a finger in her face and tell her what a greedy person she was for wanting a raise. But in fact, she got the raise she wanted with no difficulty. However, when she told her mother of her triumph over the phone, her mother said; "isn't that being greedy?"
When we put those two stories together we see the common theme clearer. The imaginary catastrophe prediction, REALITY TWO, is based on a critical internal voice where the self-doubts of the past continue to reside. Imagining this kind of personal catastrophe is nothing more than the projection of one's self-doubts and self accusations onto the world screen as something that is about to happen out there, when in fact it is happening inside of you.
Once more, we can trace the act of binging and overeating back to self-doubts and self-criticism. When you apply the pause technique, the feelings you acknowledge are the beginning of a pathway that will almost always lead down to that unfinished business, that lack of confidence and uncertainty about one's worth and goodness that plagues so many people who are struggling with the habit of emotional eating.
What "catastrophe" are you predicting will happen if you loose your protective layer?
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 3:20:24 PM | POST A COMMENT
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 18, 2011
Riding 100 Miles Uphill
This is the story of a patient who has been struggling with weight issues since her early teens. One day she told me about how she had just completed a 100 mile bike ride for a charity organization. She was proud of her achievement because this ride was on a grueling course, up four hills, each of which had an 8 mile incline. The story itself made me exhausted. I marveled at her strength, endurance and ability to stick to it. She is a married woman in her mid-50s and had only taken up biking later in life as a way to get the exercise she needed to complement her chronic dieting efforts.
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She then went on to tell me that her riding partner, a professional trainer who works out seven days a week, was riding faster and stronger than she was. She said "I guess I'm not so strong after all" and looked a bit deflated. I was immediately taken aback. The bike ride was a great victory for her, and in two minutes she took it away from herself.
The emotional mind has a way of thinking in the negative, the kind of thinking we endeavor to clarify and change in the Shrink Yourself Program. If the emotional thinking is not revisited and corrected, then the conclusion sticks... "I am not so good" and the achievement is nullified. Her self image stays weak, and the achievement that enhances her self image disappears.
I took her up on her obvious thinking error. Unless she was number one she was essentially nothing. She wasn't satisfied to be in the 99.9% percentile of women her age who are capable of riding 100 miles uphill. That meant nothing. She was applying one of the thinking errors that we demonstrate repeatedly in the program.The all or none thinking error. This is one of the major emotional thinking errors that perpetuate the self doubts and self criticism that plagues almost all emotional eaters.
We both understood the history involved. During high school she felt that she was fat and rejected by most of the other girls who were thin, including her older sister. She was teased and put down. Now she was working hard to be in shape and was proud of her achievements in her workout group. When one of the members said that she looked like she was being too aggressive and competitive in trying to be better than the rest of them, she had her wits about her to say "no, I am doing this for myself because it is my turn to be in good shape." However, secretly she thought to herself, it feels good to be better than somebody. Nothing wrong with enjoying a small victory.
She defended and endorsed that particular achievement, but when she reversed her big 100 mile uphill bike ride victory, by slipping into the all or none thinking error, she put herself right back in high school again. This happened inside of her mind quickly, like a reflex. Unfortunately, the bad feelings and self doubts from the past are perpetuated in the present, as if they are still true.
That is an example of how the past history perpetuates itself inside our current life. This is how self doubts and sore sensitive spots from the past, continue to be the kind of emotional pain that drives us to over use food for comfort.
This is a key issue. Past experiences cannot be eradicated from your brain. They have occurred and they are recorded. But you can do something to modify that recording. You can sort out the difference between the memory experience, even if it was painful, and the current reality. Her current reality demonstrates that she should be very proud of all the effort she has put in to stay in shape. She does not have a body that people can make fun of, she is strong, and she now enjoys her physical strength. She is the only one who can take that success away from herself and return to being the victim of her self doubts.
This is why we push the PAUSE and THINK exercise so strongly inside the program. You have to catch yourself doing this to yourself. And you have to catch yourself many times before you can master the distinction between a memory experience, and the reality of a particular situation. Over eating and binging interrupts your clear thinking and keeps you from making this crucial distinction and therefore keeps you stuck in those parts of your past you no longer want to inhabit.
What have you accomplished lately but have denied yourself the success you deserve?
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 12:53:58 PM | POST A COMMENT
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 10, 2011
Why Diets Fail
Did you know that diets fail over 95% of the time! Studies show that in fact, after a short term success, people regain all the weight lost plus an additional ten percent. Sounds like most diets are predictable formulas for gaining excess weight rather than losing it.
Some people think that diets fail because they just are not the right diet. Other people think that diets fail because they are just too hard to follow. While others think they fail because the initial motivation to diet wears thin very quickly. And still some others think that it has nothing to do with the dieter, but prefer to blame the social pressure to snack on unhealthy foods.
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Based my own clinical experience, I am totally convinced that there is ONE major reason that diets fail, and that is due to emotional eating. Diets fail because there are times in life when eating food (as a reward, or as a means of distraction, or as a way to control painful feelings) is more important than the long range outcomes of healthy eating.
Everyone eats for emotional reasons from time to time and to various degrees. That’s inevitable, given that eating is the centerpiece of every family, every day. From infancy on (in addition to nutrition) food is used for pleasure, as a reward and as a marker of love, affection and nurturing. Food becomes especially important in those households where the real kind of affection, understanding, and nurturing is in short supply.
When food becomes “love,” there is never enough of it to fill the need for the real thing.
Given that all humans desire unconditional love, you can see how easy it is to come to rely on food for comfort. With this in mind, think about what it means to go on a diet. What you are depriving yourself of, is not just the food itself, but the relationship with food that acts as a substitute for the “nurturing” that you need. Diets fail because human beings cannot hold out too long when they are hungry for “love” and some form of it is nearby, even if it is unhealthy, like junk food or a bad relationship.
Emotional eating is the main reason why diets fail. And emotional hunger will always interfere with your weight loss efforts until you become conscious of the psychological insights that will set you free. That’s what we help you do inside the Shrink Yourself Program.
How would you describe the “love” or nurturing that you are looking for?
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 5:50:39 PM | POST A COMMENT
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 2011
Eating the Past
If we think about it, it’s pretty obvious that our past experiences, and memories of those experiences, still influence how we think and act today in many different ways. However, have you considered that you might be trying to “eat away” a very understandable misunderstanding.
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Let’s call this “misunderstanding” your illusion of safety. It’s a protective “pattern” you set up in childhood, probably for good reason. And its this "safety net" that you are getting caught in now as an adult.
If you are an emotional eater, you have probably noticed that certain people or events can trigger uncomfortable or painful feeling that don’t really seem to make sense at the time. That’s because something “unconsciously” reminds you of your “past.” And we all know how easy it is to turn to the comfort of food, to fill the void and create the illusion of safety and satisfaction.
If you continue to use emotional eating to cope with your outdated childhood pain/pattern, you will remain stuck and unable to free yourself from the false illusion that you are still a powerless child. However, if you are willing to pause and begin to re-examine that childhood injury, you can re-frame it with the adult thinking that will set you free.
It is a blessing of nature that time and maturity help us understand our childhood truths, however there are people and tools to help us recover faster and sooner, if we seek them out. The Shrink Yourself Program is one of those tools that can help you recognize and end old response patterns that began in childhood and no longer make sense to continue.
What event from the past is still “eating away” at you?
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 8:01:34 PM | POST A COMMENT
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 2011
Drama, Trauma, or Abuse
Childhood abuse is the physical, sexual, emotional mistreatment, or neglect of a child. The breadth of exposure to household dysfunction and “abuse” during childhood varies tremendously. From the child’s perspective, it doesn’t matter whether the degree of “abuse” was real, exaggerated, or imagined, the experience was internalized as traumatic. Even unintentional childhood mistreatment can have lasting effects. The one thing all forms of abuse have in common is the effect on self worth. No matter what kind of abuse is suffered, the child ends up feeling less worthy, and less entitled to a good and full life.
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When a parent attacks you as a child, it is an attack that comes from a position of authority, from the one who is all knowing and can see right through you to the core. Because this authority is unquestionable, if you are attacked, you must deserve the attack because of something you did or didn't do, or didn't do well enough. It that moment, it was uncontested that it was you, not the parent or any other person or thing who was wrong or inadequate. This harsh and unyielding judgement, which is taken on as the truth by the child, is the common legacy of such abuse. Unfortunately, the child is left completely powerless to confront this false construction of worth.
When you are overly criticized or abused as a child, you grow up afraid to make mistakes. You learn how to shut down or play it safe in order to avoid the anticipated assault before you can do or grow in ways that satisfy you. This invisible obstacle, the memory of these past assaults, keeps you frustrated and has you feeling powerless and emotionally hungry in response to many, if not most desires to be your authentic self. Believing that you have no power to change these feelings, or to make different choices for your life, you choose food for comfort.
Failure, worthlessness and inadequacy. Those are the stigma that are carried from childhood into adulthood. If you are looking for achievement to compensate for your internal sense of failure, it will never be enough. That’s because when you compensate for poor self esteem, you are doing so because deep down you believe that you are worthless. Emotional eating is a behavior you learned to do to try to cover up those painful feelings.
If you don't question WHY you are feeling this way, then the false "truth" from childhood remains your truth in adulthood. If you continue to believe the false assumptions that you made in childhood are true, they will become an immutable destiny, and you will remain powerless. Eating without hope of a better life will only reinforce the negative image of childhood, and you won't be able to do the work to free yourself from this childhood legacy.
I invite you to become conscious of the powerlessness you felt in the past and use it to transform those feelings of helplessness into the skills of a problem-solving thinker.
To recover from your childhood you need to accept and confront your painful feelings and memories with the mindset of a problem-solving, mature thinking adult. I guarantee that once you are committed to putting childhood's traumas into a mature adult perspective, every experience will become a part of the healing process. It is important to come to terms with the fact that you can't change the past. However, you absolutely can change the effect of the past on your current life! It is an ongoing process that has to keep moving forward, insight by insight. It can be done, but you need to be emotionally present to do it. And to be present means you must stop using the food trance to avoid your feelings.
Are you ready to PAUSE and let your feelings move through you?
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 4:04:32 PM | POST A COMMENT
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2011
Do Not Shut Your Mind Off, Turn It On!
How do you deal with uncomfortable emotions? Do you let them become the beginning of a “train of thought” or do you distract yourself with food? Emotional eating is a very effective way to block or avoid feelings, but an unhealthy and unproductive way of dealing with what those feelings represent.
Feelings point to our needs and desires. Happy feelings occur when you feel satisfied or believe that you are going to be satisfied. Negative feelings happen when you are frustrated because a need or desire is not being satisfied or is not going to be satisfied. It's the negative feelings that we tend to block with food. We fool ourselves into thinking that the comfort of food is a solution to the pain of our negative feelings. However, it’s those same feelings that we block with food that are exactly the ones we need to examine most closely.
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When you capture the feelings that create those cravings, as they come to the surface for however brief an instant, you can begin the healing process that will cure you of your food obsession. Only when you become aware of your negative feelings can you begin to take corrective actions. Blunting or blocking the negative feelings means you are avoiding dealing with your own very real and very important needs.
I have been treating people with emotional eating issues for over a decade and I can tell you that every patient I treat starts out believing they are powerless to satisfy their most important needs, or resolve their most troubling problems. However, every single person has discovered that they are not powerless at all. They were just not using their problem solving mind yet.
That is why it is so important to PAUSE before eating and let your true feelings bubble up, so you can begin to let your mind do its job. Feelings fully felt, no matter how difficult, are not an exercise in frustration but a path to empowerment.
Here is a statement from a Shrink Yourself Member who now knows how wonderful it is to reclaim the fullness of her feelings.
“The pause technique has been so useful to me. At first I identified the feeling of boredom as the reason I was reaching for food. As time went by and I continued to dig deeper I realized there was some anger and resentment there too sometimes. Now I am even getting further and finding a lot of longing - for affection, contact, understanding and love. I've realized it is not scary to feel these emotions. It is actually wonderful to feel.”
When you block your feelings with food, you shut off the part of your mind that is capable of thinking, understanding, and getting perspective. If you use food to shut out your feelings, you will stop thinking about what is really bothering you. When you don't satisfy your emotional needs, you bury them. Then the buried emotional hunger turns into cravings that drive you to overeat. When you take your mind out of the equation, you find yourself eating when you are not hungry and you don’t even know why.
It's important to embrace your emotions long enough to start thinking about how you would describe the feelings, what they remind you of, and what they are pointing to. Keep in mind that you have a mature problem solving MIND that can deal with your needs and frustrations more effectively than food, if you let it.
Are you ready to hit the pause button and let your mind do some work?
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 3:31:55 PM | POST A COMMENT
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 07, 2011
Count to 10
When you got angry as a child, do you remember when you were told to count to 10? Let’s look at why your parents or teachers wanted you to do that. The reason was to give you time to calm down and think more before reacting to your strong feelings and urges.
When you feel instantly and automatically angry, you are certain that you are right and the other person is wrong or that an injustice has been done to you and you need to do something. However, in this initial state, you are very likely to act out inappropriately.
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When you count to 10 you give yourself time to THINK about the situation. Maybe you did something to provoke this, or maybe it's just a misunderstanding, or maybe this is really a small issue, or maybe you are just in a bad mood and it hit you the wrong way and you’re overreacting.
At the end of counting to 10 you will have done an analysis with your INTELLIGENT MIND rather than reacting on your initial emotional impulse. That short PAUSE is long enough for you to shape a more thoughtful response. You might still believe that injustice was done and you are right, but you will be able to handle the situation more effectively.
It is important to make the distinction between immature thinking and mature thinking here. We call the initial automatic response an "immature" way of thinking. And we call the thoughtful response (after the count of 10) as the "mature" way of thinking. Is there any question about which way of thinking is the best way to conduct your life?
This is why we focus first on the PAUSE technique inside the Shrink Yourself Program. If you don't "Pause and Think," it will be next to impossible to get control of your eating habits. And if you don't engage your mature thinking process, your life will continue to feel out of control and you will continue to use food as a form of medication.
Were are all guilty of some immature thinking from time to time. However, if you have become a victim of the emotional eating habit to automatically run away from feelings, then your immature thinking will be in control of your decisions and your life. This is what you want to change. You want to feed and nurture your intelligent adult mind rather than pacify your childhood issues.
You may be feeling that food controls you now, however once you learn and practice the difference between immature and mature thinking you will be in control of all aspects of your life. This is what the Shrink Yourself Program will help YOU do for yourself. The side effects of doing this personal growth are ending emotional eating, losing weight and letting your Best Self shine through.
What old “immature reactions” are you ready to let go of?
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 3:50:39 PM | POST A COMMENT
MONDAY, OCTOBER 31, 2011
Are you a Runaway?
If you are a binge eater or a compulsive over eater you are a Runaway. That's because when you eat that way, you are actually running away from yourself. When kids run away from home, it's because they feel misunderstood or under appreciated or abused. Everyone has felt unloved some time in their childhood, but the Runaway not only feels that sometimes, he or she comes to feel that way all the time. He or she feels it so deeply that it becomes the unquestioned and immutable truth and there's nothing that can be done about it except to run away. The Runaway experiences great pain and a sense of helplessness.
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As I continue to work with patients who are fighting the food obsession, I find myself always encouraging them to use the pause technique and simply ask themselves what they are running away from when they reach for food in a compulsive manner. I can ask that question safely because I know that they don't need to run away from their feelings anymore. Although the feelings are painful, you are no longer a helpless child.
The answers to the question, "what are you feeling?" vary in accordance with where you are in the treatment process. It usually starts out as "I don't know. I just feel this overwhelming hungry feeling even though I just ate and I am full." I encourage that person to experiment more, knowing that soon it will become clear to them. If they are sitting in the room with me, I might make a comment on the emotion that shows on their face because their body almost always betrays their feeling. Your brain knows what you are feeling, even if you can't put it into words yet. When I commented on one patients facial flush she was able to tell me she was running away from sadness, only after she found her face wet with tears.
Feelings are the way your body and brain communicate about what is going on in your life. True feelings point you to what is important to pay attention to and help you figure out what action you need to take. That is why it is so important to NOT numb yourself with food!
Are you ready to stop running away from your feelings?
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 2:52:58 PM | POST A COMMENT
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 22, 2011
Case Study: Feeling Deprived
Doris is a woman in her sixties that lives a very full life. However to keep herself from feeling deprived, she would snack late in the afternoon and eat again before going to bed every night.
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The Emotional Pattern:
Feeling deprived has two root causes. You may be legitimately and biologically hungry because you have not eaten enough, and feeling deprived is your body's signal to get something to eat. But you may also be feeling deprived of love, or contact, or opportunity, or understanding, or any of the other psychological "foods" that we all need to feel full and flourish. The fact is we can be "emotionally hungry" because of some legitimate psychological need. In either case, there is a real and legitimate need operating in the background, and feeling deprived is the signal your body gives to alert you, so you can start thinking about what you are going to do to get that need satisfied. But first you have to separate out the two kinds of deprivation. If you don't, you might be feeding yourself cake and ice cream when in fact you should be making a telephone call.
Her Reality Check:
When I asked Doris if she could fast for twelve hours to prepare for a blood glucose test, she answered that she had done that several times in her life. So I asked if her feelings or hunger were unbearable then? No, she answered, she didn't feel deprived even though she was hungry. Then you can handle the deprivation of food, can't you?, I said. Her eyes lit up because she hadn't thought about it that way before. She has been automatically eating when feeling deprived (emotionally hungry) since she was eight years old without ever thinking about it. Putting that feeling into words, despite the many years of therapy she had before I saw her, made the difference between food hunger and emotional hunger quite real. Now she has something she can work with and think about.
Her Insight:
As we continued to talk she described a rather awful childhood that included an unbelievable amount of deprivation, but not of food. She was deprived of love, understanding, and basic acceptance. The connection became apparent. That's when she learned how to run away from the terrible feelings into food. Now, as an adult, she continues the pattern. When during the course of her day or night she feels under appreciated or improperly loved, she feels deeply deprived and instead of doing something about it, she eats.
Although feeling deprived is a normal response to what is happening in her life, the intensity of feeling deprived is not. The level of intensity is a response to the memory of her childhood life. As long as she ate compulsively and automatically to just the whiff of feeling deprived, she couldn't make the distinction between the normal adult feelings of deprivation (which she can handle) and the horrible memories of her childhood which never got processed and put to rest. A few moments of insight opened the door to a stunning piece of self-analysis and a remarkable outcome for Doris.
Our Process:
The feelings you are running away from (with food) will not hurt you, they will actually help you rediscover yourself. This is the first insight that must be achieved in order to put an end to compulsive eating and the dependency on food. I cannot emphasize too much how important it is to master the Pause Technique, so you can open up to your feelings. The very same feelings that you usually run away from are the ones that will lead you in the right direction.
This is what we walk you through inside the Shrink Yourself program. It's like opening a door into those parts of your life that you need to explore in order to manage and overcome the anxiety or depression that interferes with your good intentions of creating healthy eating habits. When you open this door, you can use the best part of your mind to deal with what is important to you now.
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 8:05:40 PM | POST A COMMENT
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 14, 2011
Fathers, Mothers, Sisters and Brothers
Last week I wrote about two sisters. This week I want to include the whole family. You may wonder what family dynamics has to do with being overweight? In a few cases nothing, but in most cases it is the old unexamined familiar patterns from the past, that cause the intense cravings that make it impossible to stick to a diet.
As I’ve said before, the primary principle of emotional eating is that one over eats in order to hide from the painful emotions that point to unresolved problems. These unresolved issues are probably not much different the same problems in living everyone faces. However, the emotional eater has learned how to easily, through food, run away from the disturbing emotions that would otherwise prompt them to solve these problems sooner.
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When life problems don't get resolved over time, more food is necessary to quiet the mind, and you lose sight of the original issues that need your attention. But you can't trick your own mind for too long. The issues don't go away and the problems and the burden accumulates. They sit inside the mind, and they weigh you down. That is why it is so easy to feel overloaded and about to explode. And when you become so afraid to know what you are really feeling, you automatically turn to food.
Feeling "powerless" is what makes you fat. Learning that you are POWERFUL is what will lift your dependency on food.
Let's examine the issue of powerlessness when dealing with or thinking about your original family. You are an adult now, and may even have your own children or grandchildren. Whatever happened in the past is past history, and although it may hurt to remember certain things, it can't mean the same as it did when you were a child, because you are not dependent on your family for survival as you were then.
As a young child, abandonment was your greatest fear because you didn't know the ways of the world yet. Now, unless you are totally economically dependent on parents or family members, you can make your own way in the world. In childhood, there was real issues of powerlessness in relation to your family, or your family members. In adulthood, there is only the memory of feeling powerless. You have to remember this critical distinction in order to master any current frustrating experience with your family.
You may be keeping yourself "powerless" by waiting for someone to give your power back to you. You may be looking for a sibling or a parent to tell you that you are now accepted, or lovable, or valuable, or worth caring about, or smart, or pretty, or competent. Maybe you are trying all the old ways of being nice, thoughtful, caring, helpful and/or self sacrificing in order to finally get that approbation that you feel they are holding back from you.
In every relationship there is a play of power, a dance and a balance to be found. If you are waiting for approbation, then you are not using your power. In fact, you have given your power points away to the other person. And even if they (your mother, father, sister or brother) are not consciously trying to keep the power over you, very few people are mature enough to know how to give it back. You have to assert yourself in new and different ways to demonstrate that you have your own power, and that there are consequences if they continue to mistreat you.
You can start to feel more powerful by simply considering alternative options to what you have been doing. If one thing doesn't work well, you can always try the next option.
You can confront behavior you don't like. You can have a quiet conversation about it. You can avoid certain topics. You can distance yourself. You can set boundaries. You can declare what you will do or you won't do in response to what they are doing. You can let go and move on. You can give the relationship a time out. You can lower your expectations. You can change your behavior and see how they respond. You can ask for explanation of behavior you don't understand. You can ask someone close to speak up for you.
In families that exercise their options, there is continuous growth for each member of the family and evolution of the family dynamics. However, if you actually believe that you are "powerless," then this change and growth doesn't happen. The same old relationship hurts, dramas and scars just keep going on and getting bigger, over and over again. So if you are an emotional eater, your experiences with your family will make you eat more because the repetition is so painful and it makes you feel even more hopeless.
The other person does not have to respond the way you want. You have to behave in a way that makes you proud of yourself. That's real power.
Once you start the Shrink Yourself program, you will learn that looking inside is not so dangerous, but actually liberating. It gives you a new sense of control in how you live your life. When you learn to work on your problems, rather than avoid them, you will carry a lighter load consciously, emotionally and physically.
What small step can you take to feel more powerful?
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 5:07:46 PM | POST A COMMENT
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 07, 2011
THE TALE OF TWO SISTERS
This story illustrates the emotional eating issues shared by two different women. Both women have very difficult relationships with their respective sisters. And it is the "sister thing" that is central to their binge behaviors and chronic weight problems.
Although both women are married and both have very strong successful careers, neither of them can stop binging when they are unhappy or distressed with their sisters. And despite the fact that their present life is going quite well, both women get emotionally charged when talking about their childhood grievances.
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One woman feels overloaded by the responsibility of taking care of her older sister while the other feels exploited by her younger sister. Both relationships are enduring with absolutely no real danger of ending. However, neither woman can seem to figure how to fashion a healthy, mutual, workable relationship with their respective sister. They both feel helpless to do anything about it, since in their own minds they've already tried everything.
The relationship with their siblings has frozen in time. It is their sense of “stuckness” and powerlessness, that causes the intense cravings that trigger them to overeat.
Both women were the sensitive, loving and kind ones in the family who didn't want to hurt anybody, and were hoping not to be hurt if they continued to be endlessly kind. While this is an admirable quality and certainly consistent with the universal value of family loyalty, when carried to the extreme it backfires. They both feel helpless because they can not set boundaries or negotiate some fair exchange with their sisters for fear their sisters would be offended, hurt or not speak to them.
The have been unable to take the normal chances that one takes in most relationships, because they feel responsible for holding the family together. These women are trapped in a chronic state of disappointment because they continue to “give more” than they could possibly “get back” in hopes that it will work out eventually.
All relationships must evolve and change with time if they are to be healthy, vital and real relationships rather than empty shells of dutiful exchanges.
Both of these women have something else in common. They can be hurt by their sisters but they can never show anger. In their minds, anger is dangerous because it can lead to certain actions that might jeopardize the relationship that they must keep intact at all costs. These women both feel that their sisters are taking advantage of them and essentially assaulting them. They are deeply hurt and at times they can talk about being angry, but the anger has never been expressed.
The anger has been banished. The anger is being stuffed down with food. They have actually disconnected themselves from the automatic bodily feeling of anger.
They have both interrupted a critically important conversation with themselves. Anger is automatic, and natural, and useful. If you banish your natural response your mind can not process information properly. Anger leads to problem-solving, because when you feel angry you have to figure out what to do about your anger. You have to do some mental work to move it from the raw anger of lashing out, which is the immediate impulse, to a more thoughtful and appropriate response to the other person. When anger, in its raw form is banished, no action takes place and you are left only with the hurt, and the added pain of feeling helpless.
When emotions are buried, childhood assumptions and patterns do not have an opportunity to evolve and grow into mature adult relationships.
If these women were to trust themselves more, and take a small risk, they could start an honest heartfelt conversation with their respective sisters... and then they will find that they no longer need to banish their anger with a double cheese burger.
Do you still have "frozen" relationships in your family that drive you to food?
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 11:20:23 PM | POST A COMMENT
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 2011
All or None Thinking
There are many reasons why Emotional Eaters turn to food when feeling overwhelmed or oppressed by life. The most persistent reason is related to family roles adopted early in life that have not been modified or updated to adult standards. A common role that is taken on, is taking responsibility for making Everything all right, and fixing Everyone in family. It is usually the most sensitive person in the family who gets stuck with this impossible task.
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The following case illustrates the "All or None" Thinking Error.
In this situation, a woman in her mid-50s, is trapped in an old pattern that is feeding her food obsession. She still carries with her the responsibility for making her 85 year old father happy, giving her mother the sweetness in life her father doesn't give her, and taking care of her struggling sister. Part of her wants to move as far away from her family as possible to get out from under the constant burden, but another part of her not only enjoys some moments of family happiness, but also has a true and loving care for the welfare of all three.
Her problem is not her family. Her real problem is her "All or None" Thinking. She erroneously believes that she will only be successful if she achieves her IMPOSSIBLE agenda. When having lunch with her father and mother she is only successful if he NEVER gets angry or disagrees with her, and she can make sure that he is ALWAYS nice to her mother. And she can only be successful with her sister, if she can CURE her of her hypochondria.
Unfortunately, with this "All or None" Thinking perspective, the things she does do, and the peacemaking she does achieve, do not count if she is not 100% successful. The appreciation, often offered by all three of her family members, never penetrates. If she didn't make it ALL right, then she didn't do anything, and has to keep trying harder each time. That's why the burden is overwhelming, because it is endless and forever frustrating. In this state, the only way she knows how to comfort and reward herself, is with her daily fill up at the 7-Eleven.
That's the situation. Here is the way out.
It starts with taking current reality into account and questioning her "All or None" Thinking pattern. Something she had never done before, because she was not aware that she was doing it. She has to abandon her erroneous thinking which is... if she doesn’t do it “perfect” and make it ALL better for Everyone, then she has failed and therefore is a “failure.”
In order to resume her healthy adult development, she must look for a way to quiet her own mind that does not depend on stopping her family members from yelling at each other. This is what it means to live in her fifties and no longer function as if she were still at home. Then she will find her "True Will” that has been interrupted and hidden by food. She can learn to break this pattern by exploring the options in-between the "All or None" extremes, of 100% success or 100% failure.
The key here is making conscious deliberate choices that are based on the reality of your current adult needs, while still having consideration for others. Making thoughtful decisions and taking new actions, will change your old mental image and will reinforce your new sense of freedom and personal power. In that moment, when you abandon a role that started in childhood, it will feel like a prison sentence has been lifted.
If you don't stop and make a conscious choice, the care taking role will continue uncorrected, the oppression will not go away, and the strong cravings for food will continue to erupt because the need for relief from this self imposed burden is incontestable. Choosing to see, act and feel differently, with an adult perspective, is the difference between being powerful or powerless.
Are you caught in an "All or None" Thinking Trap?
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 8:39:54 PM | POST A COMMENT
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 2011
TRUE WILL
You may be asking yourself, what is my “True Will” and how do I find it?
First, you have to recognize that your obsession with food is a symptom of being stuck in an endless willpower battle between your Conscious Will to diet and your Unconscious Will to overeat. In order to resolve this conflict, you need to get in touch with what your True Self really wants and needs.
One way to start reconnecting to your innate healthy self, is to NOT let your own critical voice, that second guesses everything you do or don't do, have the last word. You need to accept and appreciate that, like everyone else, you are not perfect and that you have always been imperfect. Once you accept and embrace your imperfections, you will realize you have been doing the best you can and you can start to forgive yourself for what you did not know, and/or for the mistakes you (or others) have made in the past.
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One person asked, is the "True Will" the same as the higher power in the 12 step program? That higher power has been described in so many different ways that I hesitate to answer. However, if trusting in the higher power is the way to reconnect and trust your “True Self” then the answer is yes.
Trusting yourself in this way is like opening a gate. When that feat is accomplished, everything else can move through more easily. But before the gate can be opened, the emotional eater has to loosen the grip on his or her "security blanket" and realize that there is a whole new way of thinking available to you, if you stop interrupting your own thought processes with food.
Why is it so difficult, and what is the fear about?
The fear that a child has when you try to take away the “security blanket,” is that he or she will be overwhelmed with the terror of abandonment. As adults, we are afraid of getting lost in the weeds of your own emotional confusion. What people fear is that the voice of the critic within will get louder, more demanding and more scolding and they will feel even more powerless.
What you will learn once you release your "security blanket" is exactly the opposite of what you fear. You will learn to trust your "True Will” over the demanding perfectionism of your familiar overbearing critic. Those who have succeeded will tell you there is nothing to fear and everything to gain.
When you trust what is real in the present moment, you will be free to define yourself by what YOU want or who YOU really are rather than what your family, spouse or boss wants you to be. If you want to be more attractive or outgoing, you don't have to stay at home and pretend you don't care. If you want to have a healthy body, you don't have to hide behind fat. If you need to say no, you will say no, or the same with yes.
As you speak up more and take new actions, your “True Will” will become stronger and louder and it will drown out the troublesome inner critic. Then you will be free to be yourself, to live YOUR life, to accept and respond to reality as a mature adult. That's how you will overcome the intense cravings for food and take control of your eating habits, as well as manage and enjoy your life as a proud and happy person.
What is your inner critic saying that you NO longer need to listen to?
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 2:09:12 PM | POST A COMMENT
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 2011
Three Forms of Will Power
How many times have you had this thought?
"I have no willpower when it comes to food!"
Well it's not true. You have plenty of will power. You have a determination to lose weight by dieting, and you have probably spent thousands of hours exercising that "will." But there is something else you are determined to do, and that is to avoid certain feelings and thoughts about yourself that bother you. This other "will" mandates that you eat to stuff down those feelings. In that sense, you have too much will power and you are out of balance when it comes to food.
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This battle of the two wills is endless unless you recognize that you actually have a third "will power” source. There is a power within you which I call the "true will", and that is the will to continue to mature, deal better with reality, and be proud of yourself as an adult who can make your life work. You know about this "true will" which is pushing you to stop hiding in the shadows or behind your fat. This true character of who you really are deep down inside is the part of you that you need to reinvest in or reinvent. You have known about it all along but have been afraid to admit it out loud, because you don't know how to have the conversation that will let it out safely.
Why are you willing to be powerless over food in order to “protect” yourself from being powerful in your life? By staying in the old willpower framework, you keep the focus away from the real emotional issues that keep you stuck and in pain. It's all about stepping out of your comfort zone and challenging your false sense of safety. In this case, the security blanket you need to let go of, is your misplaced faith that MORE plain old willpower is the answer to your eating problem.
Once you take the leap of faith and start working on yourself instead of your diet, you will find a new source of energy and motivation. Then your "TRUE WILL" will have the power to make healthy decisions that are in your best interest. That's what it really means to have will power. That's when you will be "cured" of your food obsession. Members of the Shrink Yourself community who have completed the program, have learned how to reconnect with their TRUE SELF safely and have prospered in all areas of their life.
What does your "true will" want to say or do?
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 11:38:16 PM | 1 COMMENTS
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2011
Fear, Hope and Growth
We've firmly established that in order to "cure" yourself of a food obsession, you have to do some personal development work, i.e. reinventing some part of yourself. It is always liberating to learn new qualities and skills. No one, who has ever grown and found deeper parts of themselves, has ever said they were sorry they did it. Although it may feel scary at times, growing from new behavior has life long positive benefits.
So why is it that what seems so right and natural, is also seen as something dangerous and impossible? It is true that whatever is avoided tends to grow dangerous in the dark recesses of your imagination. If you have been avoiding growth by interrupting it with compulsive or binge eating, then whatever you have avoided has grown to monstrous proportions inside your mind. The longer you avoid it, the more frightening it becomes to look at. I can assure you that there is nothing to fear and everything to gain. Even though, some of your emotions may be telling you a different story.
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Here is a comment that illustrates an extreme degree of fear and avoidance. She is too afraid to even learn about emotional eating in this very safe venue probably because it might tempt her to look at herself, and learn about herself.
"I've been reading this blog for a while now. Sometimes I am too afraid to read it. I guess that's what you would call avoidance. Why? I don't know. What am I afraid of? Good question. I don't know really, but it may just be failure. Because I've failed so many times before."
However, she is intrigued and determined to do something more, meaning maybe something like this could work, and maybe she can look deeper. But notice how she modifies her commitment so she can escape if she needs too.
"I decided to finally buy your book and get serious. Stop avoiding. Thanks for making your blog available for people like me who are comforted by reading it. I will eventually, hopefully, be inspired to make positive changes when the time is right."
In this next comment, facing reality (having an honest conversation with yourself) is seen as a greater danger than thinking of yourself as a failure. Failing is seen as a benefit, a protection from this greater danger. I am sure this is a deeply felt position, but does it make sense? Seeing yourself as a failure is such a painful blow to your self esteem and self worth. Can reality actually be that much more painful than having a lack of self confidence?
"Oblivion. I stuff myself or eat what is not healthy because food is my drug of choice, and I'm seeking escape from reality- oblivion- because it's easier to be a failure than to face reality."
Why not make positive changes right now?
This member found the courage to begin an honest conversation with herself. She tried one simple step. She stopped "intercepting" her own feelings and started listening to her own voice. She simply listened to what she must have been saying to herself for decades, but didn't want to hear. By not paying attention to her own needs, she became stuck, and powerless. Although it may be painful to look deep inside, it will open new doorways to a new way of being and eating.
"I'm giving this a test drive. When I don't intercept my feelings with food, I'm surprised by what I'm learning. Throughout my life, I've felt my self-worth depended on others' assessment of me. I've allowed people to push me around rather than standing up for myself. As I reflected on relationships with others in my life, I see how I've allowed others to control me. I've given away my power. I have sought the approval of others at the expense of losing myself. It's time for change. It's time for me to get back in the driver's seat."
Another member volunteered a remarkable testimonial about our program, but it starts with the fact that she hung around the Shrink Yourself site for almost two years before she decided to join the program. Here's a small piece of what she said when she finished the program.
"I have been a binge eater for about 40 years. FORTY YEARS! I have tried every diet, every weight loss program and weight control method out there. I can tell you the calorie and carbohydrate content of pretty much every food as well. I know from diets. I started SY formally 11 weeks ago, although I purchased the book, and came to the site regularly from about 2 years ago. I have also tried many therapies to get rid of my Compulsive Overeating....but nothing clicked. But that is all in the past. Since starting SY, I have not binged. Once. More importantly I have no desire to binge. I have learned, that when I feel like eating I am actually seeking relief from some anxiety or issue -- and I stop and try to figure out what it is. As soon as I do, the feeling to eat goes away."
That's a great success story, but it’s not your story... yet! What usually happens when you give yourself a chance to get unstuck, is the opposite of what you are afraid of. You are irrationally afraid of an outcome that is worse than failure. And yet you also have an inner knowing and hope that being honest with yourself is the right thing to do. By working through your issues, and resolving this mysterious conflict, you will find a piece of your own truth that will set you free from the constrictions you learned and accepted as a child.
Where are you on your path to success . . .
stuck in fear, feeling hopeful or moving towards growth?
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 9:46:26 PM | POST A COMMENT
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 02, 2011
Afraid to Feel
There is a continuous process that takes place between your body, your brain and your mind. Your brain sends out messages in the form of sensations, feelings and thoughts that demand your mind to “think” about, in order to sort them and figure out how to respond. Emotional eating is a way of interrupting this crucial conversation.
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If you put the "mute" button on by overeating or binging, you shut off the flow of wisdom and intelligence of your own brain, and the natural maturation process comes to a halt. The normal process of growing and reinventing yourself in little daily steps doesn't happen, but the need to change and evolve doesn't go away. Then you get behind in the personal development work you need to do to survive and thrive in this complex world.
Human nature is such that when we know we have to make some changes in ourselves and we don't do it, we feel guilty and our self confidence becomes drained. That's when we feel powerless, and that's when the powerlessness is turned into cravings that are so intense we think there is another person inside of us making us eat too much.
Getting back into the flow of the normal maturation process (reinventing yourself) is the "cure." Because when that happens, the food addiction will be broken and the cravings will go away. Then you will be free to stay in touch with your true self on an ongoing basis.
But why is it so frightening for some people to feel their own feelings? It is not frightening for other people who have made a point to stay in touch with their feelings. They see their feelings as desirable rather than formidable. But if you have been afraid of your own feelings for a while, your normal feelings are misinterpreted as dark and dangerous, ultimately leading to the one of the worst of all human conditions, which is shutting them down and then feeling powerless.
Remember, you are trying to teach yourself to recognize that you are not powerless, that you have choices and options, and that you can be creative about how you respond to your feelings.
The concept is simple. Think first, before you choose to eat! Listen to your feelings rather than hide from them, and think about what your mind has to say. And when you actually “see” new choices and overcome your hesitations, you will be rewarded immediately for your effort and bravery with a renewed sense of self confidence.
In order to reinvent yourself and overcome your obsession with food, you have to reexamine and reevaluate particular people and events in your life, and then put your new insights and intentions into action. The Shrink Yourself Program provides a method to practice these principles.
Can you identify what you are afraid to feel and why?
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 12:59:38 PM | 1 COMMENTS
TUESDAY, AUGUST 30, 2011
Reinvent Yourself
Emotional Eating is not simply a bad habit, but a symptom of a much more complex human phenomenon that involves all parts of your mind and life. In order to fully break the emotional eating habit and free yourself from binging, compulsive eating or the food obsession, you have to reinvent yourself!
Reinventing yourself can mean something as basic as setting healthy boundaries, or being able to find your voice and make yourself heard. It could be developing a proactive attitude to all the daily ups and downs of relationships at work or at home. These are obvious skills or patterns that might even sound simple and easy to do just by making a decision to do them. However, it is very difficult for the person who has not done them before, particularly if they have been thinking about doing it for a long time and not yet taken the steps to put it into action.
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Reinventing yourself could be acquiring those life skills and/or self confidence that you probably admire (and/or envy) in another person. You may have other strengths that you are proud of, but what you envy in others is what you don't have. You envy them because on some level, you know you could develop that ability if you worked at it. It’s important to keep in mind that these other people did not have the same upbringing that you did, did not have to adapt to the same set of parents, or go through the same difficult transitions, or deal with the same family dynamics. We've all had different experiences in life and have adapted to them (with our own strengths and weaknesses) in ways that has worked well enough so far.
The question of reinventing yourself comes up when
"well enough" is no longer good enough.
It's somewhat of a paradox. On one hand, reinventing yourself is about modifying common and ordinary behavior that others have already done for themselves and demonstrated that it is safe and effective. But that's not how it feels when you think about doing it. It feels almost impossible, like climbing a high mountain without any preparation. For someone who has been shy most of their life, to suddenly speak up and have their voice heard seems like it's asking too much.
There is a steady pulse under the surface that pushes personal
evolution and change while we are busy living our daily lives.
Emotional eating interferes with normal growth and development. The ongoing maturing process of reinventing yourself and recovering from childhood is stopped in its tracks by emotional eating. When a signal occurs that is prompting you to look at yourself, to reevaluate a situation and take some risk or practice something new in order solve a problem you mute that signal with food. When you binge or overeat it blurs the message your brain is sending you before it gets clear enough to hear. Emotional eating is like having a constantly interrupted conversation with yourself. Every time it gets interesting and important, eating interrupts that internal conversation, and the growth process is halted.
However, your brain doesn't give up, the message for growth is relentless, so it keeps coming up and you keep stuffing it down. That's why binges and overeating occur in unpredictable and unpreventable cycles. Cravings are a sign that you are emotionally hungry for growth and the indicator that it’s time to reinvent yourself. This is the kind of thinking work we help you do inside the Shrink Yourself Program.
Given this time in your life, how do you need to reinvent yourself?
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 11:05:24 AM | POST A COMMENT
TUESDAY, AUGUST 23, 2011
Childhood Misunderstandings
Food obsessions are often tied directly or indirectly to childhood influences from the past. As naive children, trying to understand the complexity of adults, we jump to certain conclusions that are not true and not in our best interest. Somewhere along the line, the comfort of food became a safe place to hide from these false assumptions about ourselves. In order to end emotional eating, our childhood “misunderstandings” need to be re-discovered and re-framed with a new adult perspective.
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Let’s use this example to illustrate the link between the past, the desires of the present, and the growth that needs to be completed before the obsession can be cured.
The Family Dynamics:
"I realize now that disappearing is what I felt like I needed to do in order for everyone around me to be okay. I sensed my mother's passive-aggressiveness and feelings of overwhelm with so many children. My parents arguments and the demands of life were very disturbing to me and, being a child, I internalized these conflicts as somehow due to me."
Her Adaptation:
"If there was any way I could reduce them, I would. So I tended to be the nice, shy kid who did everything to avoid rocking the boat. So personal power is something I relinquished in order to keep the family afloat. If I asserted myself, certainly it would be the tipping point and my parents would argue and get divorced. My family was my security and it seemed often to be on the edge of destruction."
She sacrificed her personal power, but the normal urge to have a voice and be heard and understood did not go away, it just went underground, and got covered up by a top layer of food.
Her Insight:
"I found a way to assert myself... I stuffed myself and indulged in junk food. I rebelled with food. Today I choose to be in charge of my choices and I can have a voice by asserting myself in real life."
Her Growth:
She is in the process of recovering her sense of personal power. She has the right to live her own life, have her own opinions, and express herself in a sensible and effective manner. As she continues to challenge her “childhood misunderstandings” she will become more confident as a capable adult in control of her own life. Her cravings for the comfort of food will disappear as she becomes more comfortable expressing her personal power. She will be cured of her food obsession, as she grows into a fully enfranchised adult who is living in the present and not in the past. There is no mystery here. The path is clear. She will succeed as long as she remembers the difference between the past childhood misunderstands and the reality of the present situation.
What childhood misunderstanding do you need to revisit?
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 1:44:56 PM | POST A COMMENT
FRIDAY, AUGUST 12, 2011
"Clarity Of Mind"
Clarity of mind is how you “cure” a food obsession. It is both the “How To” modify your habits related to food, as well as the lifelong reward for overcoming an “addiction” to food.
It takes a lot of energy to maintain an unhealthy relationship with food. The focus on food crowds out your critical faculties required to making your daily life work in your favor. The obsession with food keeps you numb and robs you of your mental clarity.
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We can all understand what it feels like to be “thrown out of your own boat” or capsized by uncomfortable emotions. We spend most of our energy to keep from drowning while we try to climb back on board. The distant shore, or a focused port like mental clarity, which can bring comfort, feels like an illusion. The unconscious goal is to "disappear" from the painful reality of the situation, so we habitually turn to food for comfort instead of using our mental toolbox. Think of the Shrink Yourself Program as a “life saving” flotation ring.
Ending emotional eating is part of the larger life cycle struggle to achieve and maintain your independence from the painful family dynamics of the past. Our past experiences are tied to our current reality by our outdated but still active beliefs about what food means to us. The process of emancipating yourself from a dependency on food is the same as becoming a healthy mature human being. This is what we walk you through inside the Shrink Yourself Program.
Imagine what it would feel like to be rid of the huge internal pressure that drives you to food even when you're not hungry. Because freedom from an obsession with food is an attainable goal. You can live your life with an open heart and mind without hiding from the fear of confronting reality. Like this Shrink Yourself Member...
"I have been cured of my food obsession. It was a wonderful moment when I realized it happened, it felt like a huge internal pressure had subsided, and a new mental clarity had begun. I have literally grown up. I now know what it feels like to be a full functioning adult. I now experience all life has to offer instead of running a1way from it all."
There's nothing quite like living with full consciousness. When the food obsession ends, your brain will no longer be foggy, or half-knowing. The eating part of your life will calm down, the drama will end, and a whole future of discovery will beckon. Being a fully functioning adult, living a focused intentional life, and taking care of other parts of your life is the reward you get when you break the food obsession and achieve clarity of mind.
How will you feel, think, or be “differently” with a little more clarity of mind?
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 6:57:55 PM | POST A COMMENT
SATURDAY, AUGUST 06, 2011
ALMOST CURED
A patient came in to see me the other day who I hadn't seen for three months. She was doing well and in the final stage of being "cured" of her food obsession. She decided to scheduled this appointment to "reach a higher level" and to complete the process. However, in the three days just before her appointment, she had a little relapse.
I remember when she started to gain weight right before a visit back home. She was afraid that her sister would be too envious of her for having both a good life, and her weight under control. She was willing to be fat and angry at herself in order to ward off the envy.
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I mentioned that; “It appears that your old fear of success has come back to haunt you.” Success was dangerous for her then, and still is now, but probably for a different reason. This time she was asking for a deeper insight to deal with her core fear of success.
As the session went on she told me about all of her successes with food and with her life, both at work and at home. One important success was her decision to take care of herself. After a 13 hour day serving others, including her young son, husband, and full-time job, she now gives herself permission to watch television and relax. Last year she couldn't do that. Instead she would eat too much and make herself feel so sick she would have an excuse to go to the bedroom to watch television.
She had made real progress. She is now willing to declare that she has needs, limits, and the right to take care of herself. However, she told me this in a way that made me question her more. She didn't seem so confident about this simple, obvious and very legitimate need to take care of herself.
I asked her; "How can you be so uncertain about your right to do this! What else should you be doing after a 13 hour day?" She answered that maybe she should go to her desk and tackle the bills or do something else more productive. That is what her mother would do.
My reply to that was; "So apparently you're not quite sure that you are adult enough to decide to relax if that makes you different from your mother. Your mother represented the role model you grew up with. Now that you are an adult, you have to create your own rules. It is you who is pressuring yourself to do too much. Your mother isn't here. It is you who have rebelled against yourself and misused food to give yourself a much needed rest, because you were afraid to be honest with your true self. You have overcome that particular situation, so you can now watch television at night without feeling guilty. This demonstrates the origin of your guilt, which is making a false comparison between you and your mother."
My patient then told me that her mother envies her. Her mother can't stop working day and night and does not travel or take vacations. In fact, her mother has said several times that she would have liked to have had a life like her daughter has. Then she tells me she feels guilty now because this week she has time off from work.
Aha, I said; “It all comes together in the three days before this appointment. You are proud of your success, you have another piece of the good life by having time off, and all that makes you a bigger target for your mothers envy. You are being successful, and yet still vulnerable to outdated patterns. And now you are tempted to overeat to shut this conflict out of your mind.”
Any outside observer wouldn't question her right to relax after a long day of service. She questioned it only because she wasn't quite sure she had the right, as a wife and mother of a ten year old, to be different than her mother, or the fortitude to withstand her mother's envy of her life.
Although there is always more texture to the story than this vignette, it does illustrate the point I want to make. Which is that the last stage of the "cure" for the food obsession is all about completing your sense of being an adult, taking charge of your own life, and emancipating yourself from the old rules and roles of the family dynamics.
She is in the final phase of being "cured" of her food obsession. To complete the process, she needs to continue to become a fully functioning adult in all sectors of her life. As an independent adult she will not need to compare herself to her mother. She will recognize that she does not have the power to change her mother nor does she have the responsibility to keep trying. She should enjoy the fruits of her good marriage, wonderful child and good job because there is no "real" reason to feel guilty any more.
Do you have feelings of shame or guilt that interfere with living YOUR life?
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 2:51:39 PM | POST A COMMENT
SATURDAY, JULY 30, 2011
Origins of a Food Obsession
Every time I see a new patient come into my office with a food obsession, I am reminded of how durable the obsession is, and how difficult it is for the person to see what is really going on. From a therapist's perspective, what I am about to describe may sound obvious. However, the person who is struggling with the food obsession is practically blind, when it comes to seeing the source of the obsession.
A woman in her 50's came to see me after reading my book. She is an educated and intelligent woman who has a small profitable business and is happily married, with an adult son and four grand children. However, she was feeling totally desperate.
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"I've been losing the same 15 pounds on and off for the last 40 years! I've tried every diet and nothing works. But I'm not ready to give up."
She went on to describe in a very tearful and painful way, her life history with a father who tyrannized her and a mother who couldn't protect her. Her siblings gave in to the father but she remained the rebel of the family. She was constantly getting herself into trouble but never giving up or giving in to her father, who was occasionally kind to her but more often brutally angry with her. This is a familiar story to me, since many of my patients who have an obsession with food also have a difficult family history that continues to cause them a great deal of emotional pain.
When I asked about her eating patterns, she told me she mostly binges either at night or on the way home from work when she starts thinking about her day. During the day she is too busy and active but when she has time to think, she begins to feel too much emotional pain. So on the way home she will stop at a fast food place for a fix.
Right there we have the blind repetitious pattern. The events of her childhood are long past but the memory is alive deep down inside and causes emotional pain. To ease the pain she rebels against herself in the same way she rebelled against her father. She punishes herself by being overly harsh and critical of herself, as he would have punished her in the past.
She is stuck in a cycle of an old family drama which gets repeated over again every day of her life. The drama is played out with food as the leading character. When I pointed this out to her, her eyes opened widely and she said innocently acknowledged that she had never thought of that.
She was so focused on the food and the 15 pounds that she never thought about the origin of the pain that was dominating her life. Since she couldn't put it into a current perspective, she couldn't find the pathway out of her stuckness.
"I now remember that every single day of my life I was told that I deserve to be punished. It was not only my father but my aunt and sometimes my mother. I continued to rebel and get in trouble at school and that only exacerbated their telling me I needed to be punished, which made me rebel even more."
At the core of her obsession are two deeply embedded competing beliefs. One is her belief that she deserved punishment for being a defiant child in response to her tyrannical father. The other strong belief is that she was the brave one in the family who had pride and would never give in to the father. But at age 55 she had not yet decided which of these beliefs was correct so she blindly repeats the cycle by taking care of herself as a good person and then punishing herself as a bad person. It is all played out on those 15 pounds that go up and down, representing these two beliefs, both of which are obscured by her preoccupation with food.
It's important to remember that overcoming the food obsession is part of the life cycle journey to maturation. There is always a historical story going on in the person's mind that has not yet been resolved. People hold onto their obsession with food and are resistance to insight because on some level they believe that their problem cannot be resolved, and that they are better off not knowing about what is going on in their mind.
This patient did not want to end up believing that she was truly a bad person who deserved to be punished, which was the belief that dominated her earlier life. However, if she isn't that bad person who deserves to be punished, then who is she now? She can acknowledge and honor her adult self as she continues to make the distinction between the dynamics of the past and her current life situation.
That's how curing an obsession with food will open up your life. The food obsession occupies your mind space to protect you from your worst fears about yourself and at the same time prevents you from overcoming those old irrational self doubts. Finding your cure to your food obsession is more important to your growth than just being able to control your weight.
Can you identify the origins of YOUR obsession with food?
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 11:48:22 PM | POST A COMMENT
FRIDAY, JULY 22, 2011
Overcoming Self Doubt Takes Practice
Everyone struggles with self doubt, but when you have been using emotional eating to run away from your doubts, you have harmed yourself in ways that you could not have anticipated. When you run away from self doubts they become stronger and last longer.
However, once you have learned how to deal with your self doubts in a new way, there is a real surprise. You actually release a very exciting part of yourself, a new passion or a new competency or a new attitude toward life. It is really quite wonderful and a big bonus to add to controlling your weight and ending your obsession with food.
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The self doubt cycle is “real” for everyone and a very difficult part of being human.
As you read the comments below, notice how powerful self doubts are in controlling one's life and how we continue to misinterpret circumstances to support the old negative labels we have given ourselves. Note how the origin of the self doubt label is tied to specific painful memories in the past and how hard it is to let go of them. It is very important to live in the present and continue to re-fresh your perspective of reality. This is what we help you do inside the Shrink Yourself Program.
Start by recognizing your self doubts. If you are struggling with your self doubts, then you are ahead of the game, because you are learning to recognize them. Once you recognize them, you can work on them, and with practice, overcome them. It’s important to remain hopeful and open to daily insights.
“I doubt myself every day I am a true perfectionist, I have been this way forever and I will continue to struggle. But I will make it!!”
“As a child I thought I wasn't good enough, because I had a mother who after I did a chore, would do it over because I didn't do it right. This self doubt and low self esteem followed me into adulthood. I am still struggling with the am I good enough syndrome. As a member of this program, I’ve been able to open up a lot of feelings and now I can try and deal with them.“
“I am constantly doubting that I have the right to be where I am - career-wise in particular. I look around me and assume that my colleagues are all so much smarter than me, and better than me in what we do. Years of being told by my mother, in fits of rage, that I was stupid, no good, won't amount to anything sank in. They had to. I had no one telling me otherwise. What alarms me is that I can "know" these things, yet not change them ... yet.”
“I doubt myself in so many ways - I feel I've screwed up life so many times that I am stuck in doubt that I can make positive and successful changes. I am afraid of making changes for fear I will fall flat on my face again. My mind goes through all the possible horrible outcomes my decisions might have. I really needed to read this today, because it's helping me to see that the only way out of this eating pattern is to start making changes - to address the real reasons I eat.”
“I doubt whether I am a good enough parent. And I wonder if I have made my kids feel as though they were not good enough by my tendency to expect perfection from myself and others. I think my most apparent self doubt label is that I often feel ‘unlikeable’ and yes, I still struggle with this label and often find situations and examples mostly in the workplace to confirm this self doubt.”
I have plenty of self doubts myself, but the main one is whether I am lovable. As long as I was fed, I was meant to be ok. Therefore, simple caring scares me, I remember I got really panicky once, when I felt someone honestly caring about HOW I AM. I guess that's why I always doubt, whether I'm worth loving, especially by the opposite sex. I fancy someone and then I find millions of reasons, why I'm not good enough: too fat, too boring, too serious etc. Or if things start moving forward, I find reasons to convince myself, that he doesn't really like me that much and there is no point of continuing as it's going to hurt much more later on. Then I end up feeling lonely and still longing to be loved.
“It makes me cry to think that since I was a child I have been full of perfectionist tendencies and self doubt/loathing. I see myself as dumb, ugly, fat and a pig. I am 47 years old, yet the imagery remains. I struggle constantly with realizing I don't have to do everything 'perfectly'! Despite the fact that I was a straight 'A' student, have a job, family, do volunteering and yet I still felt that way. I stuffed it over with food to stop the hurt and for the last 10 years have been trying to figure out how it all fits. I am better now - so much better! Yet still there is this small child hiding inside crying because someone called her a cootie bug, and she thought it was true. Thank you Dr. Gould. I needed this more than I needed a diet!
“i doubt myself into oblivion and then find myself needy and helpless because i don't trust that i can get myself out of a dark situation on my own account. i am not sure when i started doubting myself or what "label" it comes from. i think it is because when i was younger i did drugs and was not as "perfect" as my siblings who are always punctual, cheery, and in shape. i screwed around as a teenager probably to rebel against the image of perfection that i have always felt was necessary to belong in my family. then two years ago i had cancer. i had to move back home and everyone was lovingly-ish focused on me. in order to live up to their focus i lost myself and moved toward their ideal image of me. in order to justify their concern and emotional investment i felt i needed to become perfect. i did survive cancer wohoo! but changed my entire life to fit their ideas and aspirations for me. no wonder i am not happy in my current life situation! and i still have that perfection part following me. in order to be a part of my family, who are the people that supported me while i was sick, I feel like i need to be perfect. it kills me. I kill me. all while knowing exactly how important and fragile life is. but the good new is- i didn't realize any of this before i began typing and as i frantically write this i feel pounds lighter and much more wise.......thanks Dr. Gould and the SY blog. insight will release us.”
Practice accepting others rather than judging them. Since being overly judgmental is not limited to yourself, you can practice not judging others first, then start to apply it to yourself. It's something everyone can try and benefit from.
“There are so many harsh judgments of people all around us all the time for such trivia. It is difficult not to get caught up in it. I am recognizing it now and choosing not to participate. I will not judge others harshly for minor mistakes. This helps me treat myself more kindly too.”
Practice doubting your doubts. This next statement represents the "defeated tone." When you still believe it's important to be perfect, you deny yourself the room you need to doubt your doubts.
“So am I getting this correctly? We eat because we are trying to be perfect or because we are trying to control. I definitely say that I eat too much because I doubt that I can follow some really strict plan forever and so why bother?”
And most importantly, practice self acceptance. You are not perfect, you are not a superhero, you are a human being with the capacity to rethink events, recover from hurts, and learn new behavior.
“Overcoming my perfectionism has been a huge step for me and something I continue to work at. These days I'm much more comfy in my skin and not nearly as hard on myself as I used to be, but there are still pockets of self doubt to be addressed. Recently, rather than trying to get more done better, I have been concentrating on the art of self-acceptance, on getting comfy with NOT being perfect, with NOT feeling guilty for shouting at the kids or not getting stuff done. The weird thing is, the more I practice self-acceptance, the more I get done and the calmer I get! Being kind to myself and not beating myself up really seems to make me want to do stuff. I guess it's the old story that we all respond to love better than to hate - the carrot rather than the stick. So my advice is to quit perfectionism - there's no such thing - be kind and loving to yourself instead and if you can accept your "flaws" they really do become less of a problem.”
How can you practice self acceptance?
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 1:29:24 PM | POST A COMMENT
FRIDAY, JULY 15, 2011
How Does Doubt Make YOU Eat?
We’ve looked at how marriage makes you eat and how rebellion makes you eat. Today I want to write about how doubt makes you eat. Of course none of these actually MAKE you eat. However, each of them tempt you to respond by eating, because each in their own way make you feel temporarily powerless. And for some reason, eating makes you feel better and in control.
The type of doubt that I am talking about is not doubt about whether something is true or not. It is not doubt about another person's motives or interests. And it’s not doubt about how the world works or whether God exists. It's doubt about your own self worth.
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How do you doubt yourself?
Are you “not enough” of something or “too much” of something else? Do you think of yourself as not good enough, not smart enough, not pretty enough, or not talented enough? Or, do you consider yourself too greedy, too needy, too passive, or too jealous? Unfortunately there is no end to these lists... the details are different for each person, but the theme is the same.
When we doubt ourselves, we are questioning our own value and self worth, which is not always a bad thing. There is useful doubt when it is based in reality. It's helpful to watch and measure yourself as a serious student, or a good enough mother or a kind enough person. We all have strengths and weaknesses, and becoming better at something by recognizing we could do more or put in more effort is a healthy way to approach life.
Good doubt is an essential part of ongoing intelligent decision making. Bad doubt is exactly the opposite, it is destructive and corrosive. When we begin to doubt ourselves and measure or compare ourselves to some unreasonable standard of “perfectionism” we actually feed and strengthen our negative self doubt labels. In fact, you could almost say that once you have established a deep self doubt, based on impossible rigid standards disconnected from reality, that you grow this self doubt every day, and unwittingly strengthen the self doubting, self accusatory part of yourself.
Are you stuck in an endless cycle of doubt?
When you eat to push away or drown out your feelings of self doubt, you are actually creating and/or reinforcing new self doubts. When you doubt your will power or your ability to control your weight, you look for “reasons why” and end up accusing yourself of all kinds of character flaws and defects. These “excuses” will pile up and band together to sabotage your best efforts until you take the time to psychologically understand why you turn to food for comfort in the first place.
I am continually amazed about how hard we are on ourselves and how painful and damaging it is. That's why it is so important to identify, challenge and overcome the old self doubt labels that we continue to blindly support.
The good news is that “not enough” means there is something that can be improved upon. Something new to practice that will move you forward and replace the old doubt. That “something” is a new way of being in the world, a new quality or skill to be developed or improved, that will help you in all areas of your life. This is what we can help you do inside the Shrink Yourself Program.
What self doubt label are you still struggling with?
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 1:16:00 PM | 2 COMMENTS
FRIDAY, JULY 08, 2011
What Makes YOU Eat Too Much?
The fact is that ANY life frustration can be the trigger that makes you eat too much. And what makes you eat too much one day will be different than what makes you eat too much on another day. This can be disappointing if you are hoping to find and fix that ONE trigger that explains it all.
It could be rebellion, self doubt, marriage, guilt, or perfectionism that triggers you to overeat and or binge. But if you look closer at yourself there IS something that ties it all together. It is not out there where things happen to you. It is inside you. The common denominator is the way YOUR mind and body responds to the frustrating triggers of a complex life.
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On bad eating days, those days when you have an overwhelming desire to binge or eat too much, you are really "hurting too much" and you don't believe you can bear the pain. It's not the source of the problem that makes you overeat, its the pain you feel when you think about what's bothering you.
Your out of control cravings are emergency reflexes that provide useful information.
The same frustrations that you might have been able to work through on one day, may feel very different on another day. It is likely that you are a very sensitive and caring person, so that things bother you on a deeper level than most other people. When too many negative things happen at once, particularly when you are tired and overworked, your sensitivity to being hurt increases and you feel more vulnerable. Some part of you rings the emergency signal because you feel flooded or overwhelmed, and anticipate being even more hurt and more overwhelmed.
You believe you have to eat to avoid some emotional disaster. You have to scale down the hurt by shutting down your mind. That's why some people report that they eat themselves into oblivion, and continue to eat even if they are painfully full because they must get out of themselves into another mental world. It's not much different than getting drunk.
Unless you change this pattern, you won't be able to control your eating. "Emergencies" will always trump your best intentions, and it's only a matter of time until you just give up in the face of this mysterious other part of you that clicks in and takes over.
You can turn off this reflex, which we call the "Hunger Switch".
However, you can't turn it off if you are convinced you will hurt so much you can't bear it. You CAN turn it off, and thousands have, by learning from your own real life experiences that the hurt you are predicting is not at all unbearable, and no more frustrating or impossible to handle than it is on good food days, when you feel in control.
You have to prove to yourself that no disaster will occur if you interrupt this reflex long enough to pause and start thinking about what is bothering you. You have to prove this to yourself, over and over again, until you are absolutely sure that it is true. That's why in the first month of the Shrink Yourself Program we take you through all the exercises you need to safely experiment and discover for yourself that your "emergency" predictions have been erroneous.
What emotional disaster are you predicting when you grab for food?
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 12:06:18 PM | POST A COMMENT
FRIDAY, JULY 01, 2011
Reprogramming Your Brain
This is what a patient told me the other day...
"I feel like I have had a head transplant. My cravings are gone, my obsession with food and weight which I have had for over thirty years, is gone. I have such mental clarity now, I can't believe the fog I have been living in all these years. And I am losing weight without even trying, and I'm not even dieting."
Did she have a head transplant? Not exactly, but she was "cured" of her obsession with food, and when relieved from the burden of that preoccupation, her mind was able to expand instead of her waistline.
I have been talking about this for years in my book and in the Shrink Yourself program. The weight problem, the reason most people come to our site, can only be mastered AFTER the obsession with food is gone. I have hesitated to call this a "cure" because everyone is not cured at the same rate. However, for those who are rid of their obsession with food, it seems like a miracle, it feels like a head transplant.
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I was surprised when three years ago I first heard members of the Shrink Yourself program write in spontaneous messages saying that around the fifth session a miracle happened to them. Their craving went away... just like that! They didn't tell themselves to stop craving, which of course wouldn't have made any difference anyway. They didn't have a will power battle with themselves and achieve a temporary win. No, they said their cravings just disappeared. All of a sudden, after decades of struggle, they appeared to be "cured."
How does this happen? Here's what I can tell you for sure. The miracle moment when the cravings disappear is an unconscious phenomenon that tells us that the brain has been reprogrammed. It didn't just happen on it's own. It happened because the Shrink Yourself member and my patients were on a serious quest to figure out why food had become such an important part of their mental and emotional life.
Everyone who has succeeded in this way immersed themselves in the quest, and struggled with the issues I have described in my last series of blogs; frustration with marriage or a relationship, guilt and anger, defiant eating, and self doubts, and all the other issues that make up a dynamic life. In each struggle they gained an insight that proved to them over and over again that overeating and binging don't resolve the pain of life problems. In fact, that behavior feeds a foggy mind, a brain that is in a state of half-knowing, and half-not wanting to know.
The immersion is important. Little bits of insight accumulate. Parts of the brain get reprogrammed at a time. It all leads to a "cure" that can take place in 5 weeks for some or 5 months for others. But when it happens, it feels like magic, something most people who struggle with compulsive eating or food obsession can't even imagine happening.
Can you imagine what it would be like to be "cured" of your food obsession?
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 7:42:03 PM | POST A COMMENT
FRIDAY, JUNE 24, 2011
Clearing Out the Closet in Your Mind
A new patient came in to see me the other day about “other” problems in her life. However, it didn’t take long for the conversation to turn towards discussing her disappointments surrounding her weight. Because her issues with weight were so closely woven with the rest of her life, we kept the focus on her obsession with food.
One day she came in as a totally different person. She was calm, self assured, and spoke with a greater sense of deliberation and self awareness than I have ever seen, or that she herself ever remembers.
She said; "I decided it was time to lose weight. It just happened, and I have not been hungry since then, and I have already lost 4 pounds."
She had crossed a mental threshold. She was thinking instead of eating. She had incorporated the pause exercise into her moment to moment style of living. She had integrated her insights about her past into the new woman she was becoming as a “thinking” adult. She was being her "Best Self," her own best friend that now replaced food as her best friend.
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All the exercises and thinking work that she did were processed by her brain, and suddenly a new way of looking at food emerged. This is the way the brain learns new perspectives and how new habits are formed. Hundreds of Shrink Yourself Members have reported the same experience; suddenly the hunger is gone and their “Best Self” emerges.
I have been around long enough to know this won't last forever in its pure form. But I also know that once she has made it here, she won't lose it, and will always be able to come back to it.
She explained; "I started cleaning my closet and giving away the clothes I would never wear and plan to buy clothes that fit after I lose all the weight I want to lose."
I can't tell you how many times I have heard the story about the closet. It seems to be what people do as the final step of coming to terms with the reality about food in their life.
You look in your closet everyday, and there is the history of your weight fluctuations. Everyday you have to decide what you can wear, what to save in case, and what you hope to wear. The closet is a projection screen for your ambivalence about losing weight, and your fears about never being in control. When you clean out the closet, by making decisions about what to discard, it represents your intentions and shows the strength of your conviction to change.
She exclaimed; "What have I been doing to myself all these years?"
Let me tell you the short answer. The primary principle at work here, with her and with everyone else who struggles with weight &/or food issues, is holding on to the “illusion of safety.” Overeating and starving cycles (being fat or thin), represent the larger struggle of being your own person who is in full control of your life and responsible for the health of your body.
We all stay tied, in one way or another, to the unreasonable desire of being unconditionally loved and cared for forever. Food and fat is one way to stay connected to the familiar past. We do this well into the adult part of the life cycle, until we slowly let go of this fantasy in favor of accepting the complexity of reality.
When we finally make the "decision" to be in control of our body and our weight, we have made the decision to be an adult who can live fully in reality without using food to connect to (or hide from) the past. We all have to give up the illusion of being protected and safe, in some magical way, as we take full responsibility for our adulthood. We need to learn to value and rely on our own mature problem-solving minds to provide real safety, even if it requires doing the hard work of recovering from childhood.
Is it time to clean out your closet?
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 11:46:14 AM | POST A COMMENT
FRIDAY, JUNE 17, 2011
Married, Lonely and Hungry
A common theme, for many women, has been feeling various forms of frustration in their marriage, which triggers them to turn to food for comfort.
Let’s start with a success story. This woman has a husband who works nights. He was home for the first night in awhile and was watching baseball. All of a sudden she felt emotionally hungry. Her hunger switch got turned on and she felt like she wanted to go to the fridge and binge. But she stopped herself and paused. She thought I could say something stupid like, "you never spent any time with me." But she didn't. She thought things through. She recognized the deeper feeling that was fueling her emotional hunger and instead she said, "I miss you." In response, her husband turned off the TV and paid attention to her. By being honest with her feelings, she was able to “speak her truth” and make the connection with her husband that she wanted.
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Below are a few more examples, at different stages of insight, from other members of the Shrink Yourself Community.
This woman has been in an “OK” marriage for 44 years, although it was not emotionally nourishing. Her husband was too dominant and she was too passive. They tried marriage counseling and came to the conclusion that divorce would be too drastic and cruel for all concerned. However, she was still unable to end her emotional eating. Since she was still eating to quell her frustrations, she had not yet accepted her own decision to stay in the marriage. She still has to develop a strategy for adapting to the situation. She has some unfinished developmental work to do to address her issue of “being too passive.”
Another woman has been married for 36 years and has no “real problems” to complain about. However, her husband has more energy than her and does not seem to know how to relax. So she eats when she gets frustrated with his “go go go” attitude. His job keeps him very busy at work and at home, so again she finds herself turning to food to keep herself company. She also worries about him and then finds herself stuffing her emotions with food. Clearly, she does not know what else to do yet and needs to look deeper at what is really going on.
This married member ate because she felt “left out of the loop” between her husband and stepson. She felt left behind when they would go out and have fun and stuffed herself with food when she was alone at home. At 50, she didn’t want to start all over again. She sees her husband as a good provider, but as someone who is unable to comprehend how lonely she feels. She found the solution that works or her and has some good advice to share with others.
“Finally, I realized because I had God, I was NEVER alone and could focus on Him now instead of punishing/consoling myself with food. We all have love inside that needs to be given. If you choose to stay in a “lonely” relationship, join/become active in church, help with a charity, walk dogs or pet cats at your local shelter, take up painting or poetry. Let your energy and talents out into the world to be appreciated by many instead of keeping them at home where they are under appreciated by one! “
Another member was married before to an abusive husband. When she got divorced, she grieved “out loud” and the weight fell off. She is now married again to a man that hates to talk, so they struggle with communication issues. She finds herself imposing some of the same mental limitations she had in her first marriage. She now wants to figure out how to “live out loud” as a wife.
Yes, there are frustrations in marriage, and in life, and they are inevitable. Maintaining a marriage and growing as an individual is not easy. There will always be differences in style and temperament between a husband and wife. A successful life means you creatively adapt to your reality, and turn every frustration into what it is, a challenge to be dealt with. But when it really comes down to the final act of adapting and coming to terms with frustrations, it is something about yourself that you have to change. And it's almost always a piece of personal development, in the form of a new skill or quality that when put into action, will not only get you unstuck, but will bring more peace and joy into your life.
Keep in mind, the reason you eat too much when you feel frustrated, is because you feel powerless to do something about the source of your frustration. When you are able to see the frustration as a challenge that points to a change you need to make in yourself, you will discover that you are not powerless. You actually do have a choice. You can adapt to, and grow from your current reality or you can continue to suffer and remain stuck in frustration.
Do you know how to “live out loud” ?
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 2:26:41 PM | POST A COMMENT
FRIDAY, JUNE 10, 2011
Messages From Your Mind
I think I have established clearly in previous blogs that there is a known pathway to break the emotional eating habit. It requires you to PAUSE and RE-THINK the situation with new INSIGHT. This requires practice, persistence and patience. You need to do this over and over again until you convince yourself, by your own experience, that you can handle whatever is stirring in your mind without using food as a form of medication.
So what is being stirred up in you, that is so disturbing that you want to hide in food rather than understand and deal with the messages your mind wants to deliver to you?
The range of issues that can trigger an emotional eating episode is vast but most people have a limited and familiar personal list. That makes the task of learning how to cope with these things much more manageable.
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Sometimes it's the feelings and thoughts that remind you of a difficult life problem that you don't want to face or have been facing but don't know what to do.
At other times it may be your perfectionism. There is a critic inside that can be harsh and persistent and you don't know how to effectively talk back to that part of yourself.
Sometimes it's not a problem or your critic but simply a feeling that is emotionally loaded because of your past life. Your sore spot might be that you're feeling misunderstood or unappreciated or overworked or being controlled by someone at work or at home. When those contemporary experiences ignite a painful relationship experience from the past, this threatens to flood you with confusion, and you turn to food to shut down your mind.
Whether it's a problem, your critic, or a sore spot, you can learn better ways of handling it than shutting down your mind with food. That's the lesson that you have to totally absorb and integrate into your life experience in order to end emotional eating and control your weight.
The first technique we use to help you become more aware of what’s really going on, is simply to PAUSE at the critical moment that you are feeling a strong urge to eat in response to an emotional stimuli. The pause gives you a moment to reflect. If you don't pause but simply respond to the urge there is no opportunity for insight because the thinking in your mind is shut down. The pause must take place in the midst of a strong urge in order to have a corrective experience that retrains your brain.
When you pause you will be in touch with what is being stirred up inside your mind. I can tell you that whatever it is you will be able to handle it. If you are an emotional eater you do not believe me. What you need is evidence that you can rely on. That can only come from your own experience.
Inside the Shrink Yourself program, we take you through the exercises that allow you to gather your own evidence based on your own observations. You have to have EXPERIENCE that you can handle whatever is coming up in your mind or in your life. You have to re-learn this is true many times before you will be confident enough in your new skills. You have to rebuild your confidence on a strong foundation. You have to prove to yourself that you have a strong, capable adult mind before you can let go of food as a safety valve.
Are you ready to listen to and work with your adult mind?
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 3:24:31 PM | 1 COMMENTS
FRIDAY, JUNE 03, 2011
Feeling Stuck and Hungry
Ninety-five percent of dieters gain their weight back. This discouraging statistic prompted the beginning of a group called the National Weight Control Registry. They became interested in determining what brought success to that 5% of people who are able to lose weight and keep it off. What they've found was that the people that kept the weight off didn't just change their eating patterns, they changed their life in some way.
Perhaps you know someone who has lost weight and kept it off. When you inquired into how they succeed you might have heard them say something like this:
- I was ready to start having fun in my life.
- It was time to get my career into high gear.
- I was going through a divorce.
- It was time to stop being so afraid of rejection.
- I lost someone dear to me and realized it was time to take care of myself.
- I was ready to own my own sexuality.
- I was going through menopause and didn't want to go into the next part of my life as a heavy person.
The place where they were stuck wasn't just related to their weight, it was related to some aspect of their life. When a person feels “stuck” they will experience emotional hunger.
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Being stuck is like having one foot on the gas pedal and another on the break. Your foot is on the gas pedal because you desperately want to go somewhere, that's somewhere in the future where it feels like your life will to be on track. Your other foot is on the break because you're afraid to let go of what is familiar, even if it is not healthy for you anymore.
Emotional hunger is there to indicate that you need to make a change; do something different in order to move forward as a maturing adult. When you use food to comfort emotional hunger, you disable their body's internal guidance system. You no longer have an inner compass leading you toward the things you need to pay attention to. When this happens, you are more likely to stay stuck.
The people who have dieted successfully got fed up with being emotionally hungry. By dealing with the underlying issues that fueled their emotional hunger they were able to turn off their hunger switch. Their physical hunger became manageable and they were able to adhere to a sensible eating plan and lose weight, and keep it off with no dieting.
This didn't happen all at once. They had to learn how to turn off their emotional hunger switch. They had to contend with the reality that it wasn't just that they felt emotionally hungry. It was that they felt powerless to do anything about their emotional hunger. They didn't believe that they could effect any change in the parts of their lives that were unsatisfying. They had to prove to themselves that wasn't true, that they weren't powerless.
Are you ready to get unstuck? Take your foot off the brake and you will begin to go forward. Once you're moving you can steer yourself where you want to go. The way to take your foot off the brake is to break the emotional eating habit. That’s what we help you do inside the Shrink Yourself Program.
In what area of your life do you feel stuck?
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 3:50:24 PM | POST A COMMENT
FRIDAY, MAY 27, 2011
From Out of Sight to Insight
The real reasons we overeat or binge are generally not the most obvious ones. Emotional eating appears to be somewhat of a mystery, because the meaning of food is so interwoven with the psychology of each person's unique life. Emotional hunger is unconsciously tied to both current triggers and past dramas.
Everyone who starts and breaks a diet or who wants to stop eating but keeps eating, is in conflict with themselves at some level. Often the conflict is hidden or buried under layers of unexplored issues.
Many members of the Shrink Yourself community report about the part of themselves that they know is rebellious when it comes to eating. They describe their rebellious self in great detail. They don't just describe, they glorify this part of themselves. In a funny way they are proud of it. It's their stake in the ground, a defiant piece of independence, a statement about who they are at their strongest and most immovable. Hundreds of times I have heard people say in their most undefended moments, "No body's going to take my food away from me."
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That someone who wants to take food away from you is you. When you start a new diet, the “mature” part of you is saying that you want to learn how to eat in moderation and stop using food in excess. You want to stop obsessing about food which is making you feel miserable. You are the one who wants to stop this eating pattern because it's in your best interest.
So who is the “rebellious” self? And what is that they want? Either you want to control your weight or you don't want to control your weight. The worst position is being STUCK between the two conflicting voices.
If we look closer, it is clear that one of the selves is rational and lives in the world of today. The other self is the rebellious self that was born somewhere in the past, is outdated, and by all the laws of rationality should not have any voice at all in the present, much less total control.
When I ask members or patients about this rebellious self they often tell me about their personal history. The origin is almost always a rebellion against a parent, most often their mother. They vividly remember their mother constantly harping about their weight during late childhood and adolescence. They did not see their mothers attention to their weight as a loving gesture. Usually they saw it as a rejecting gesture meaning that they were not valued if they were heavy and would only be valued if they were thin and popular. In response to that interpretation of their mother's intent, they dug in their heels and rebelled and refused to lose weight.
Before we go any further I want to be sure you understand that this is just one of the many origins of the rebellious self. There are many others. Some that started later in life. Some that have nothing to do with a parents obsession with their weight.
But think about this mother-daughter scenario for a moment. This was a relationship that took place decades in the past, sometimes as many as four decades in the past. Oftentimes the mother is no longer alive. And although this may be an accurate description of the psycho-dynamics of what happened, there is no reason to continue an old battle. It is now a meaningless gesture in the present moment. However, for some reason, the rebellious voice still has something to say.
What is required to have a better understanding of this conflict is new insight. Insight comes from having an intelligent internal dialogue with yourself. That's the way the brain works. The brain has multiple processing centers that work individually and every night when you go to sleep your brain works very hard to synthesize what you have learned in these multiple centers.
That’s what we help you do in the Shrink Yourself program. Although the emotional eating issue is complex and the rebellion against yourself very personal, there is a step by step method that can help you deal with your individual issues. We keep you immersed in thinking about emotional eating and your life for 12 weeks through multiple approaches and features so that you can collect hundreds of little insights. As you “sleep on them,” your brain can finish the work at night and you can wake up a little bit wiser the next day.
All significant learning takes time, attention and practice.
Are you ready to do the work?
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 10:57:41 PM | POST A COMMENT
FRIDAY, MAY 20, 2011
An Insight A Day, Keeps the Pounds Away
Last week I said that overeating is an ineffective coping mechanism that keeps you from facing your fears and making the changes necessary to resolve painful life problems. This means that you use food to interrupt your thinking process, in order to avoid something you need to pay attention to. The more you avoid, ignore or deny the challenges in front of you, the more you will continue to eat unconsciously.
The question is, how can we help you get from the wrong but familiar repetitive non-productive conversation you are having with yourself about your weight; to the correct and productive conversation you must have with yourself in order to break the emotional eating mindset?
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Sarah said; “My problem is that if I want to eat then I must eat. There is no stopping me. I can't be shamed out of it. I will eat regardless of where I am or who is watching me. I have no shame but I loathe myself and hate myself and get annoyed at myself for it. Afterwards I beat myself up wondering why I can't stop myself and what is making me do it."
Many others have described their overpowering urges as if there was another person inside of them taking control, making them as powerless as Sarah describes. This is a real feeling, but if you open up your mind a bit, the insight that will help you is... maybe this other person inside of me is me, and is knowable, and not forever hidden from view.
Margaret said; "I realized eating does not soothe the pain of my feelings but it drowns out the noise of my critical and negative voice inside of me. It was an 'aha' moment! Understanding that my way of operating was to make food choices, then my inner voice berates me. This is the space where my inner pain comes from, not from the food itself, not from my choices, but from what I say about those choices.”
Everyone who suffers from this kind of addiction to food as relief or reward works hard to break it. However, they almost always fail; no matter how hard they try; because they are having the wrong conversation with themselves. They are talking to themselves about food, calories, will power and self loathing when they binge or fail to lose weight. What they really need to think about are the problems in living that they are avoiding when they use food to close down their mind.
The solution to ending emotional eating is insight. Insight sounds vague, but it is the most powerful tool the mind has to work with. Insights are what help us understand and interpret reality in a more accurate way. You've undoubtedly had flashes of insight in the past, that have shifted your attitude, changed your behavior and opened up new pathways as you go through the life cycle. For example, when we have the insight that we have misunderstood our spouse on an important matter, we can apologize to them and avoid repeating it in the future. This means we were able to modify our interpretation of what happened and at the same time expanded our perspective and acceptance of reality.
The insights you need now, are those that help you correct the profound misunderstanding that that food is the only resource you have for comfort. If you follow my line of thinking, then we've established that the cure for weight control is a psychological cure, and the medicine we use for a psychological problem is insight. When we feed the mind the right insight instead of food, we can help you switch from the wrong conversation you are having with yourself to the right one. Then you can get off the dieting merry go round, take back control of your eating habits and loose weight.
What current problem in living could use some new insight?
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 2:49:32 PM | 1 COMMENTS
FRIDAY, MAY 13, 2011
Numbing the Mind with Food
Everyone is an emotional eater to some degree, it is built into our upbringing. It's the habitual or compulsive part of that pattern that is unhealthy, not the occasional indulgence.
For many people, in the beginning, it is difficult to acknowledge that there is an emotional component to a weight problem. And therefore anything that makes you feel or think more deeply and personally, seems like an assault. It feels like just another person lecturing you, trying to talk you out of your eating habits by shame or logic or willpower. Someone who talks straight to you can come across as an insensitive or over controlling parent. This is especially true if your weight problem started early in life and was entangled in the family dynamics.
The reality is that life is complex and you have the intelligence to deal with it. Using food to numb yourself in order take away the pain of feeling and thinking means you are shutting off your ability to process information accurately. It means you are overeating because you are too afraid to think about whatever is really bothering you.
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There are good food days and bad food days.
On good food days, you know what you WANT to eat, and you probably enjoy eating healthy. You feel satisfied and somewhat proud of yourself. However on bad food days, you feel you NEED to eat. You feel stressed out and you need a reward, so you eat too much and then you feel guilty.
One patient actually had 30 good food days in a row before a bad day just appeared, for no apparent reason. During these 30 days her husband of two decades was treating her surprisingly well and she thought that finally all the work they did together was paying off. She didn't know why she started having a few bad food days. Everything seemed to be going so well.
There were some early warning signs that her husband’s mood was changing, but she did not want to deal with that. She wanted to stay in her “feel good bubble” a little longer and eating helped her do that. Her bad eating habits kept her preoccupied with food and guilt and kept her from facing the reality that there was about to be a blowout. So when it came, she felt furious and betrayed.
It took her quite a while to realize that her anger should not be totally directed at him. She was the one who was trying to live inside the illusion that all the ups and downs in the relationship had magically gone away. In fact, if she had acknowledged the mood changes, she might have been able to avoid the blowup altogether. If she had not dulled her considerable intelligence by numbing her mind with bad food days, she wouldn't have to store her anger in her fat cells. She paid a big price for her short-term reprieve from reality.
The truth is that overeating is an ineffective coping mechanism that keeps you from facing the fear of change and from living a productive and happy life.
Another woman was wondering whether or not to leave an unsatisfying relationship. Her weight goes up and down and she is afraid to become "skinny." What that says to me is she is afraid to make up her own mind, about whether to work on fixing the relationship, or find a way to stay, or find a way to leave. When she has a bad eating day, that means she is going to stay or at least that she is too afraid to leave. When she has a good eating day, that means she is leaning towards leaving the relationship.
Her weight fluctuation reflects her ambivalence and it also keeps her stuck. Her emotional eating habits prevent her from intelligently resolving her dilemma about the relationship. Numbing your intelligent mind with food is not the way to make an important life course decision.
Do you eat to prevent your emotions from overwhelming you?
OR
When do you use food to shut down your problem solving mind?
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 7:53:14 PM | POST A COMMENT
FRIDAY, MAY 06, 2011
Expand Your Mind, Shrink Your Tummy
What if I told you that there was not only a way to grow new brain cells and lose weight, but that you could also add vitality and optimism to your life? It is possible, however it's not as magical as taking a pill or as invasive as having surgery. It requires doing some serious psychological work. But it’s worth it! And it comes with a lifetime guarantee.
There is now enough evidence from neuroscience to proclaim that when you change a "comfort habit" your brain actually creates new cells and new pathways. In our case, this means that when you end your emotional eating habit, your mind will be free to think about love and life in a new way, rather than endlessly obsessing about food. We start this process by “pausing” the emotional eating habit long enough to garner new insight about your own personal development.
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Here is an example of overcoming shyness or social anxiety. One patient shared that she was terrified of going to her daughter's school functions. She was so anxious about not having anything interesting to say that she would hide out at the buffet table with a mouth full of food. Then, she didn't have to worry about any boring comments seeping out. Now, that she's “pausing” and making better food choices she was uncertain about how she would handle the next function without the respite of the buffet. When the time came, she actually did fine talking to another mother and making a new friend.
By taking risks and trying new behavior, she accomplished three things. She didn't consume excess calories by needing the comfort of the food. By talking to people a new world opened up and that gave her new hope. And by accomplishing those two things and breaking her "comfort habit" of avoidance and eating, her brain was actually growing while her belly was shrinking.
Social anxiety and/or shyness is just one example of being stuck. There are many others that may apply to you like carrying on a role you adopted or were assigned in your family. For example, the black sheep, or the caretaker, or the angry one, or the rebel, or the "good girl", etc. Maybe you are afraid to succeed, or assert yourself, or set boundaries, or try something new, or be more independent, etc.
What is the connection between emotional eating and personal development?
I understand that getting “unstuck” can be a daunting task, but that's what you will need to do if you want a refreshed brain and a smaller stomach. The alternative is not only living with the limited brain power and the expanded body that you currently have, but living within the constrictions of social anxiety and self-doubt about whether you are "interesting" enough, and all that that implies.
In previous blogs we talked about the divided self: the dilemma of deciding whether the emotional eating habit was a blessing or a curse for you. Whether it was something you wanted to keep or something you want to shed. Today, we take a peek below the surface of that conflict and see that it is really a question about whether or not you are ready to grow out of some old defensive pattern, and take charge of your life in a new and different way.
At the root of most emotional eating is a pessimistic thought that you won't ever be able to transcend those defensive patterns you adopted earlier in life that have become constrictors of your life right now. When you feel powerless to grow beyond some invisible but potent constricting defensive pattern (e.g. shyness, social anxiety, etc), you become excessively hungry, and eat too much to blot out your frustration and pessimism.
Whenever you eat too much to shut off your mind, you deprive yourself of the self-knowledge that would allow you to change the restrictive pattern. You do away with the signal that tells you to challenge this pattern. As long as you continue doing this, you can't make the necessary changes in yourself that will give you the refreshed vitality that every person wants and needs.
Given all of this, I hope you will have a better understanding of why I emphasize the importance of the pause technique every time there are signs of an impending emotional eating episode. That's the potential moment of change when you have an opportunity to derail this self-defeating cycle of eating every time you feel frustrated. If you shut off the first signs of frustration too quickly, you can't pursue the remedy.
What “quality” would you like to be more of?
OR
What “skill” would you like to be better at?
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 2:29:40 PM | POST A COMMENT
FRIDAY, APRIL 29, 2011
Taste the Deeper Feeling of Powerlessness
In this blog post I am going to introduce you to the one and only technique you will need to engage in a meaningful conversation with yourself about why you eat too much. You simply have to pause every time you recognize you are about to enter an emotional eating episode.
The first part of the technique is to recognize an emotional eating episode. The second part is to ask yourself why you want to eat too much at that particular moment. That is something you can observe and discover. Not why you want to eat in general, but why you want to eat at that critical moment. Once you get this far in your thinking you will notice that you begin to feel helpless and powerless. This is the space in which to have a healing conversation.
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Last week I told you how to recognize the beginning of an emotional eating episode. Here is what I said about the three signs.
- The first is the overpowering urge to binge. It is a sure sign that you want to shut off your mind with food.
- The second is an intense hunger when you know the hunger is not for food (you may have just finished a meal and are already physically full). This is a sure sign that you are feeling empty about something and are "emotionally" hungry.
- The third is having a mind filled with thoughts about food or worries about weight. These are space occupying mental entities that distract you from thinking about what is really bothering you in life. These are boring repetitive thoughts that weigh down your mind.
Once you spot an emotional eating episode and pause for a moment to reflect, you begin to use your thinking ability, the skill you need to understand yourself and to make decisions about the conduct of your life. If you never pause, the emotional eating habit continues to be carried on by a lower level of your mind. When you pause and ask yourself why am I doing this, you are using the best part of your mind, that part of your divided self that wants to get rid of the unhealthy eating pattern.
But here's where you may need a little help. You can get lost in the many "why's" that you find. You may find that on Monday you need to eat too much because you're bored while on Tuesday you eat too much at the office because you had a spat with a coworker, while on Wednesday you felt ignored by her husband, and so on. That is, your observation brings you to the first level of your journey of understanding, the first "why".
You simply discovered that you eat to get rid of uncomfortable and painful feelings. You probably already know that, but what you don't know is what to do about it yet. So now the answer to the “why” question is a little bit richer. You want to get rid of uncomfortable feelings, because you do not know what else to do with those feeling and food gives you relief and a temporary distraction.
That's a good start, however you still have to go on and ask yourself “why” as a fully grown adult, you can't find a better way of dealing with these feelings other than to eat too much? If you are able to get this far in your thinking you will notice that you begin to feel helpless and powerless. That's a truly lousy state of mind, and you will want to run away from it with more food. Try not too, but even if you do, take note of the fact that you have tasted the deeper feeling that you are really hiding from.
Continue to ask yourself a series of "why" questions every time you enter an emotional eating episode and follow your own feelings, thoughts and observations until you discover this state of powerlessness. Try to stay in that space as long as you can without thinking or acting. Do your best to embrace the moment without judgement and let go of the old gossip and chatter that spills into your mind. Once you become more comfortable with these deeper feelings, you will be better able to have an insightful conversation with yourself.
The Shrink Yourself Program is designed to guide you through the conversation that will repair your divided self. You will uncover why you feel so powerless deep down inside, and we will help you prove to yourself that you are NOT powerless. Once you have regained your personal power, you will be in full control of your eating habits.
When do you feel most powerless? And when do you feel most powerful?
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 3:15:44 PM | POST A COMMENT
FRIDAY, APRIL 22, 2011
3 Signs of Emotional Hunger
Emotional Hunger is what keeps you from losing weight and keeping it off. Here are the 3 most common signs that you are hungry for some emotional insight, confidence and stability.
The first, is the overpowering urge to binge. It is a sure sign that you want to shut off your mind with food.
The second is an intense hunger when you know the hunger is not for food (you may have just finished a meal and are already physically full). This is a sure sign that you are feeling empty about something and are "emotionally" hungry.
The third is having a mind filled with thoughts about food or worries about weight. These are space occupying mental entities that distract you from thinking about what is really bothering you in life. These are boring repetitive thoughts that weigh down your mind.
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When do YOU eat too much?
If you were in treatment with me, I would ask you to explore why you eat too much by first observing when you do it. I would ask you if is it because you are bored, or frustrated, or depressed, or anxious. Or is it when you are around your family or some other relationship and don't know how to express yourself or communicate your true feelings?
However, you are not in my office and you do not need to be, in order to have an honest and open conversation with yourself. To be more accurate you need to have a conversation with many of the selves within you but for our purposes today let's just consider that you have two people inside sharing the same mind.
Last week I talked about the dilemma of the divided self. One part of you wants to control your weight by eating in a healthy way while the other part of you wants to hold onto food as a form of self medication. These two “selves” inside your mind, are competing to control how much and how often your hand puts food into your mouth.
If these two “roommates” don't talk to each other they will just alternate in control and you will be a yo-yo dieter. You will diet and lose weight and then your other self will take over and you will gain all the pounds back. You may do this for decades with only fat and frustration as your reward for all the effort you put out and the deprivation you endured.
Listening to Your Divided Self
Unfortunately, you can't simply tell one part of yourself to STOP making you binge or eat too much. That part of you does not like to be told what to do and has no interest in giving up food as an emotional relief. There is something you need to know about that part of your mind. In the beginning of the conversation, it will NOT talk to you in words. So you have to understand when and how that “part” of YOU expresses itself.
Which brings us back to the 3 signature expressions of emotional eating.
- An overpowering urge to binge
- An intense hunger when you know the hunger is not for more food
- A mind filled with thoughts about food or worries about weight
Every time you feel or think one of these three ways, the other part of you is talking and taking over. Your first task is to observe this and try to understand what is going on within you. This is the knowledge you need to start your conversation with yourself. When you are ready, we can help you take the next step...
Which one of these signs of “Emotional Hunger” do you experience the most?
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 9:34:45 PM | POST A COMMENT
FRIDAY, APRIL 15, 2011
Emotional Eating: Blessing or Curse?
When I asked a patient WHY she ate half a dozen donuts, she replied, "what else could I do?" She couldn't figure out a better way of dealing with the demands of her 16-year-old daughter. She temporarily "lost her mind." She was paralyzed. She was unable to think like an intelligent adult.
Losing Your Mind to Food
In one way or another, other patients say the same thing, telling me that the strength of a craving, the lure of a binge, or the power of food over them, is overwhelming, and they too "lose their mind" to food. They told me that their mind was "occupied" by a force they couldn't understand, and what they wanted as much as weight loss was liberation from this preoccupation.
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So why do YOU eat too much after you have committed to a diet and told yourself you are not going to do that anymore? On one level the answer is simple and obvious. You eat too much when you think you HAVE to use food to reduce your stress level or get away from some uncomfortable feeling or thought because you BELIEVE that you don't have any other way of doing that. Then food becomes a tranquilizer; an instant, always available, medication that shuts down your mind. At those moments emotional eating is a BLESSING.
But when those moments pass, and you realize you have a bad habit of using food as a tranquilizer TOO often, and you understand that this is the single most sabotaging factor in your weight control struggle that makes you break your diet every time, then you know that emotional eating is a CURSE, and you spend a lot of mental energy beating yourself up.
And when this habit of emotional eating is deeply embedded in your life, it is even more of a PROBLEM because this habit so overloads your mind with obsessive thoughts about food and weight, that you can hardly think of anything else. It is this “obsessive” eating habit that uses up your mental oxygen and distracts you from vigorously pursuing your own personal development. It is the addiction to this habit that causes over eating, binging and bulimia.
Controlling Your Urges
If you have struggled with your weight, and have quit as many diets as you started, then you are very familiar with what I have just described. Your problem is that you have not yet decided whether emotional eating is a BLESSING or a CURSE. On one hand you desperately want to control your eating; and on the other hand you want to be able to binge when the craving becomes so strong that you feel helpless and think to yourself, "what else can I do?"
Which one of these best describes you and your relationship to food now?
1. You only want a quick fix, fast-loss diet which means you would rather go through another cycle of weight loss and regaining than deal with this divided self conflict.
2. You have given up on all diets or weight loss approaches which means you have decided that emotional eating is too much of blessing to ever think of giving it up.
3. You recognize you need to make real lifestyle changes in regard to food which means you recognize emotional eating is more a curse than a blessing and you are looking for ways to resolve this divided self conflict.
If over eating is BOTH a blessing and a curse for you, then you have a divided self. You will not be at peace with yourself about food and weight, until you have resolved the divided self conflict within you.
Emotional eating, however, can be controlled if one takes a careful step-by-step approach. In each step of the Shrink Yourself Program, you will learn a critical piece of insight, and eventually replace the initial helplessness thought "what else can I do" with the in-charge person who says "look at all the other ways I can handle this stress."
When you learn these life skills well enough to act on them, your conflict will be resolved, the "curse" will be gone, and the "occupied" part of your mind will be liberated. Then a new sense of personal power will naturally emerge and continue to grow, as the cravings that were so strong in the past, actually disappear.
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 1:46:36 PM | POST A COMMENT
FRIDAY, APRIL 08, 2011
Eating to Maintain Happiness
Emotional eating is a universal cover up for any unresolved life issue. When we have trouble moving forward in our life, we turn to food for relief. When things are going well, we over eat less. When you don't like your job, or you’re frustrated with your spouse, or you’re lonely or angry with your family, or not satisfied with the way your life is turning out, then food becomes your best friend. These are the kinds of life problems that we all get “stuck” in from time to time.
However, there is another situation that fuels emotional eating, and that is the challenge of going through a normal life transition, something I have written about in my book, Transformations; Growth and Change in Adult Life.
I recently had an opportunity to respond to three young female college students, who although they were doing well in their life, all presented with what I call the “happiness conundrum.” They ate when they were happy, not just when they were frustrated. They asked me what they could do about it. Here's how I responded.
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Patricia said: ”I finished Shrink Yourself and I felt so good after the program much more self confident, able to control the way I eat. Consequently, I went back to school and I met amazing friends there. The first semester was the best time of my life, I lost weight, felt good about me and my body for the first time in my life. I was surrounded by a group of friends that I loved and I was even admired.“
The next year she went to a new school, and it was good, but it wasn’t the same. She said: “It is just that I have images in my head of other people I know having fun together and going to a lot of parties and I feel depressed because I want my life to be exactly as last semester and it can’t be. I met a really good friend this semester but I feel like she is the only really good new friend I met and this disappoints me.”
My response: In essence, your wishes and your expectations became so entangled that you have been unable to separate out what you want from what is realistic to expect. Having had a great year as part of a clan of good friends with a lot of love and attention you were able to see what was possible in life for you. It is something that you had and something that you can have again, but to have it again you are going to have to make it happen. These wonderful years occur because of a confluence of factors and the same set of factors are not always at work. Your expectations have to be adjusted to meet the reality. Your goals and your wishes can remain the same.
You are starting to become addicted to the idea that having continuous and intensive contact and adoration from somebody is a requisite for emotional stability and self-confidence. In that sense, both food and people can become remedies for your own self-doubts and sense of being lost or lonely without this kind of "medication." At 19 years old, you are going through one of the most important transitions in life, from being your parents child to being your own adult person. During this transition, friends become a substitute family.
I would suggest that you begin to think about your disappointment as a form of longing for the safety and familiarity of your family. When you do this, keep in mind that you can feel lonely and scared, and not have to return to the dependence of childhood. You can learn to accept these yearnings as part of life and part of the transition that you are in.
Sarah, a twenty year old said: “I understand that since I equate happiness with food, that I overeat when I’m sad so that I feel happy. But sometimes when I’m with family or out with friends, I overeat and drink more wine then I should because I am happy, and I want to keep the feeling going, or be even happier.“
My comment: I recommend that you continue to enjoy the family sport of eating and laughing and not beat yourself up about it. It is one of the great pleasures in life and a good way to stay connected to family and friends. Instead of thinking about giving it up, I suggest you think about controlling it. That is you can eat and drink and enjoy the moment without having to eat or drink too much. You can learn to “pause” and hold onto that feeling of joy, which comes from within, without needing to eat or drink more to make it last longer.
I recommend that you look closer at your desire to be even happier. I find that when people try to force happiness, they are really afraid that all their happiness will disappear unless they keep on promoting it. This is a catastrophe prediction that you might want to explore more. You can learn to accept the reality that happiness is not a constant state of being. You can let it go and be confident that it will come back.
Beth, who is 21 and working at her first job, told me that she eats healthy when what she is doing in her life means something and she is getting somewhere. Particularly when she is having a good conversation with someone or when she sees the fruits of her labor. However, when that is not happening, she does not eat healthy. This means that in some subtle way she feels defeated or lost or lonely and doesn't believe that there is anything she can do about it. In essence, she has come to expect and require that her life should be moving ahead at warp speed all the time.
Her catastrophe prediction, at this age, is that if she is not moving quickly and happily into her adult potential she will not be safe. The universal fear in this transition is that she might fail as an adult and will have to fall back into some dependent status with her parents. She too needs to be happy all the time to ward off her age appropriate catastrophe fears.
Going through any transition can be challenging and requires psychological work and insight, which results in a higher level of maturity and confidence. These three young ladies are learning as they experience life and have come to understand that emotional eating can prevent that learning opportunity. It is important to remember that emotional eating shuts down your intelligent mind just when you need it the most.
Can you recognize how you use food to ward off your fears?
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 5:21:48 PM | POST A COMMENT
FRIDAY, APRIL 01, 2011
The Endless Diet Cycle
Lose Weight, Gain Weight, Feel Stuck, Give Up, Try Again...
Studies report that 95% of dieters not only gain their weight back within a year, but usually add on another 10% of what they lost. However, in contrast, 76% of the Shrink Yourself members who completed the twelve week program reported success: 31% lost more than 5% of their body weight and 16% lost more than 10% of their body weight and both groups kept if off for more than a year.
The discouraging failure statistic about diets prompted the beginning of a group called the National Weight Control Registry (NWCR) comprised of researchers at Brown University and the University of Colorado. They became interested in determining what brought success to that 5% of people who were able to lose weight and keep it off. What they found was that the people who kept the weight off didn't just change their eating patterns alone, they also changed their life in some significant way.
We have learned how to break the endless cycle. Here’s why and how we do it.
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We did an Internet survey of 7500 people who were seeking diet information. We asked them about the stress in their life and how they felt about their life. The survey results, along with what I've seen in my work with thousands of dieters, has convinced me that there is definitely a strong relationship between being overweight and being “stuck”.
Going on a diet for roughly two thirds of the serious dieters we surveyed is part of their attempt to do something positive about their life. Perhaps you know someone who has lost weight and kept it off. When you inquired into how they succeeded, you might have heard them say something like:
- "I was going through menopause and didn't want to go into the next part of my life as a heavy person."
- "I was ready to start having fun in life."
- "It was time to get my career into high gear."
- "I was going through a divorce."
- "It was time to stop being so afraid of rejection."
- "I lost someone dear to me and realized it was time take care of myself."
- "I was ready to own my sexuality."
What Emotional Eaters have In common is feeling “stuck”.
69% of the dieters we surveyed said they were not having enough day-to-day fun in their lives and an equal number felt they were not taking care of their own interests. And roughly the same percent said they were rarely free from doubts and fears and felt stuck in their life. They weren't satisfied with their friends and that they didn't like the way they spent their leisure time. 50% of the dieting population we surveyed thought they were going through a major life transition and did not think that their future looked bright.
We asked them when they most frequently broke their diet and turned to food for relief of stress. Two thirds said it was when they were most critical of themselves and one half said it is when they were depressed. As a psychiatrist, when a patient tells me they are too critical of themselves, I instinctively understand that I am talking to someone who is also depressed. I know very well from my own work with patients who are overweight, that people have learned how to silence the internal critic temporarily with food, so overeating becomes the medication of choice.
As I have said before in previous blogs, the problem with emotional eating is that it shuts off your intelligent mind. You may silence your critic for an hour or so, but the critic comes back the next day. Then you spend your energy dealing with the critic or the feelings of depressive defeat, rather than using your mental energy or mental awareness to do something positive about your life situation, and thus remain stuck. This is the vicious cycle that we are successful at dismantling in the Shrink Yourself program.
Our program is organized around the principle of getting unstuck. We help people go through life transitions by identifying and developing the skills necessary to effectively resolve difficult situations that cause emotional pain. Then self-medicating with food no longer feels necessary and the obsession with food becomes a thing of the past.
How would you like to move forward in your life?
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 12:58:22 PM | POST A COMMENT
FRIDAY, MARCH 25, 2011
Why Diets Fail: Emotional Hunger
The average dieter begins and breaks four diets a year. Only one in every 100 people succeeds in losing weight permanently. Obviously, no one who begins something and fails feels good about it. When you break your diet, you probably feel defeated, discouraged, or even disgusted.
Where dieting is concerned, it's a story of frustration on a mass scale, and yet, the futility of dieting doesn't deter those that are determined to shed pounds. People think this time it's going to work, this time I'll stick to it, or this new diet, pill, or surgery will do the trick. Maybe you can relate to that kind of hopeful thinking.
The question is, why is it so hard to stick to a diet?
In my private practice I encountered so many people who were in pain because they couldn't diet successfully, that I decided to conduct an Internet interview with 17,000 dieters. It revealed that 99 percent of people broke their diets because they were stressed, depressed, or bored. Essentially, it's emotions, not lack of willpower, that keep you from succeeding with your diet plan.
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Diets tell you what to eat, but they don't take into account that on some level you feel like you need food to manage the stresses and strains of life. When it comes to losing weight, and more specifically, how to do it successfully, knowledge of what to eat and when to eat is not enough. Everyone knows to lose weight you need to eat less and exercise more. We have television shows, books, gyms, and diet foods everywhere. There is more access to information about losing weight than ever before.
Billions of dollars a year are spent on losing weight. Yet, people continue to gain. A recent study predicts that by the year 2015, 75 percent of Americans will be overweight. There is a reason this is happening. People eat too much when they are under stress. You can't break this habit until you prove to yourself that there are better ways of handling the emotions of stress.
To illustrate my point, look at three case histories:
"Lucille" was having sexual problems with her husband.
It was a difficult session and the minute we got to talking about those problems, she told me she suddenly felt ravenously hungry and had to have a cheeseburger with fries and a milk shake. She had just had breakfast. In fact, any mention of sexual issues awakened Lucille's hunger. Lucille, like all failed dieters, has particular issues she wants to avoid facing, and when those arise, she gets hungry. She can stick to a diet only as long as no sexual problems arise but they always do. Now she has two problems, obesity and intimacy.
"Susan" uses chocolate to fight off her depression.
The thought of chocolate is the only thing that gets her out of bed. To stay out of bed, she needs chocolate at all hours of the day. She's embarrassed to admit that chocolate brings her more pleasure than anything else. She walks around fearful that one day someone will discover that she's addicted to something that is swelling her hips, raising her cholesterol, and slowing her down. As soon as she consumes her last chocolate morsel each day, a dark mood returns until sleep relieves her. She believes that if she gives up chocolate, her sense of safety will shatter. She can never stick to a diet because she doesn't know how to manage her depression without chocolate. There are much better ways.
"Ann" felt trapped in her relationship with her husband.
Her marital issues were tough, but not unsolvable. She had alternatives to explore, including counseling. But rather than attempting a new approach to her problems, she ate to banish anger, hurt, and loneliness. Eating gave her a false sense of temporary comfort and protected her from facing the tough issues in her marriage. She lived by avoidance and that only fueled her appetite. At least food felt safe. Or so it seemed until one day she recognized that she had become obese, and she still didn't know how to manage her relationship with her husband.
In all three cases, these women used food to avoid dealing with important issues that required their full attention in order to be resolved. Until they learned to face their feelings head on, they felt unable to give up food. It was not about willpower. It was about food feeling like the only way to manage emotions that seemed intolerable. The emotions weren't intolerable, they just felt that way. And eating only masked the situation and made it harder to resolve the real source of the problem. Once you understand why you eat, what you're really hungry for, and how to find fulfillment, you won’t need the false security that food provides.
I believe that people don't succeed on diets for one of three reasons:
1. They overeat because they're afraid of their feelings.
2. They overeat to reward themselves when they're frustrated or unfulfilled.
3. They overeat to assert their independence, to feel safe, or to fill emptiness.
Which one can you relate to?
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 11:44:34 AM | 2 COMMENTS
FRIDAY, MARCH 18, 2011
Food Addiction & Food Obsession
If you are addicted to food, then a lot of your day is probably spent thinking about what you are going to eat, when you're going to eat, and whether or not you will have exactly the right food in front to satisfy your food addiction. In your mind's eye, you are looking at food as much more than something that tastes good, or gives you energy to survive. In your mind's eye food is the substance of soothing and relief. In your food-addicted view, you believe food can do for you what we all wish our mothers had done for us when we were infants: provide loads and loads of unconditional love.
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The Food Trance
Over the years, I asked people who suffer from food addiction what food does for them psychologically. These food addicts tell me that if they eat enough of the "right" things fast enough, they go into what sounds like a time-out bubble or a trance. They describe it as an escape from worldly problems, but more than that, they tell me it is escape from their own inner critic. When they are in a bubble, they can believe that there is nothing wrong with them, at least for a while. Nobody is making demands on them. No one can reach them.
Some of my patients with food addiction go even further and tell me that they feel like they are in another world. For people addicted to food, the food is the friend who gives them unconditional love. Or, at least it feels like that in the moments when they are eating.
Is Being Obsessed with Food a Real Addiction?
All addiction stems from a place of arrested psychological development. It represents a place where people didn't learn to soothe themselves and so they seek that comfort in a substance, whether it's food, drugs or alcohol. Although the degree is different, this food trance is very similar to the same kind of mental space the heroin addict is trying to achieve. In the case of food addiction, the chemical shifts that food (like sugar and carbohydrates) induce have a much more subtle effect than drugs so it makes it an easier addiction to break.
OK, I'm Addicted To Food: What's So Wrong About Going Into A Food Trance?
Actually, it sounds pretty good if that were the end of it. But it's not. After the food trance is over, there is regret, guilt, and often self-loathing, not to mention weight gain that presents so many health problems. For food addicts the problems you escape from by using the food trance, are still there waiting to be resolved. People with food addiction avoid the hard work of facing reality and resolving their problems and thus suffer all the consequences. Every adult who has a responsibility for his or her life has to deal with reality as competently as they can, and going into a food trance makes that almost impossible. Each time you avoid dealing with reality by overeating, you lose confidence that you can in fact face reality. Overtime this lack of confidence has you reach for the comfort of food more and more often.
The Cure for Food Addiction
You need someone or something to gradually help you change mental directions. You will need to face up to the reality of your life enough times to convince yourself that you can successfully handle what you have been avoiding by being addicted to food. A good therapist can do that, or you can do that yourself with this program and the support of our community.
Can you recognize your addiction to the Food Trance?
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 6:21:53 PM | 6 COMMENTS
FRIDAY, MARCH 11, 2011
Overeating: A Habit to be Broken
If you're just realizing that you're an Emotional Eater, you're probably starting to see that your diet failures haven't been due to lack of willpower but something deeper. Rest assured: overeating is a habit that can be broken.
There are two reasons that people eat. They eat for health: to nourish their bodies and minds. And they eat to soothe their emotions. When a person learns to eat for emotional reasons, food becomes a necessary component of dealing with the stresses and strains of everyday life.
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Emotional eating is a learned behavior, and it can be unlearned. If you're an emotional eater, at some point in your life you learned that food could make you feel better. Maybe it was when you were a child and your parents fought, maybe it was at college when you felt out of place, maybe it was after your children left home and you didn't know how to fill their absence. Each time you felt lonely, angry, upset, or bored and ate, you reinforced the belief that food is an effective coping mechanism. After awhile your mind began to believe that food was the only option. When that happened, controlling your weight became next to impossible. That's why it's been so difficult to succeed on a diet.
Through working with thousands of dieters, I've found that people overeat when they are emotionally hungry (which means there is an important need in their life that is unmet). What turns this emotional hunger into physical hunger is the belief that the unmet need is never going to be satisfied. When that happens, one feels powerless and gives up control. I have been able to identify five different kinds of powerless experiences that contribute to emotional hunger and overeating. In my book Shrink Yourself I discuss these five conclusions at length.
Conclusion #1 - Self-Doubt Layer
You are asked to do something at work that you don't know how to do. You automatically come to the powerless conclusion that this proves you're stupid. To feel this way is devastating but you don't have to go to the vending machine and eat to numb this feeling. I'll show you how to talk back to your inner critic and erase the idea that the real you is stupid or defective.
Conclusion #2 - Reward/Frustration Layer
You go on your eighteenth date. No one feels right despite all the hope you have going into each date. You come to the conclusion that you're defeated, and there's nothing you can do about it. The search for a good mate can be disappointing but you don't have to deal with it by stopping at a fast food restaurant on your way home. I'll show you how to work on your relationships so you don't need food as a reward.
Conclusion #3 - The Safety Layer
You were hurt as a child or have had bad experiences as an adult. You come to the conclusion that you're unsafe and can't protect yourself. The trauma and pain you're feeling are real, but extra layers of fat can't change what happened to you and won't protect you from anyone. I'll show you how to create real safety by dealing with real issues.
Conclusion #4 - The Rebellion Layer
You're angry at your kids or spouse or parents. You come to the conclusion that eating is better than expressing how you really feel. You're afraid that if you express your anger you will lash out uncontrollably. Anger can, in fact, be a frightening emotion to deal with. I'll show you the difference between childish defiance and mature assertion.
Conclusion #5 - The Emptiness Layer
You almost never have plans at night. When you're alone you feel empty inside and can't experience fulfillment. You come to the conclusion that food is the only thing that can fill you up. Being alone can be really overwhelming, but I'll start you on a pathway to being able to fulfill yourself.
The good news is that each of these powerless experiences is a false experience. You're not powerless even though at times you feel powerless. And feeling powerless leaves you feeling emotionally hungry. The hunger switch turns this emotional hunger into physical hunger. You actually get hungry.
The way to stop overeating is to prove to yourself that you are not powerless by finding ways to satisfy your emotional hunger in the real world. In other words, you must prove to yourself, through a series of defining experiences that you can live without using food to shut down your mind.
To end emotional eating, you will have to realize the ways in which you've felt powerless and recover your power by exploring each of the five powerless conclusions above. Understanding yourself better and mastering your emotional responses to life is the key to breaking this habit. Your goal is to think and act instead of overeat. You learned this pattern one food choice at a time and you unlearn it one food choice at a time, too. Each time you stop yourself from emotional eating, the stronger your mind gets and the weaker your dependence on food gets.
What is your excuse for holding onto the habit of overeating?
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 9:19:09 PM | 2 COMMENTS
FRIDAY, MARCH 04, 2011
Emotional Hunger
When you experience emotional hunger you feel truly hungry, and at the moment when the craving for food grips you, you can't tell that your hunger originates in your mind, and not in your belly.
If you want to stay on the lose-some-pounds-and-gain-them-back cycle for a lifetime, go on a conventional diet. But if you want to stay trim for the rest of your life, you need to stop focusing on what you should eat to lose weight, and instead ask yourself why you overeat when you really aren't hungry.
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Your Two Stomachs
I like to think of it this way: you eat when you aren't really hungry because you have two stomachs - one real, the other a phantom. The hunger in your belly signals you when your system has a biological requirement for food. If that was the only signal of hunger you received, you'd be thin. It's the phantom stomach that causes the problems. The phantom stomach sends out a hunger signal when unruly emotions and unsolved personal agendas start pushing themselves into awareness. A short-circuit occurs, and you feel so hungry that you're compelled to eat.
I see the power of the phantom stomach demonstrated almost daily in my work with patients. The other day, a patient who had just finished breakfast told me in the middle of a difficult session that she suddenly felt extremely hungry. As soon as we started talking about her sexual problems with her husband, her appetite kicked in and she could hardly wait to get to McDonald's. Her phantom stomach was shouting, demanding action.
Phantom Hunger vs. Biological Hunger
Phantom hunger comes on quickly and knows what it wants, and it wants a lot of it. Biological hunger comes on gradually and you can satisfy it with relatively small amounts of food. Phantom hunger has such power that it drives you to go to almost any lengths to satisfy it.
I saw this fact demonstrated in Technicolor when I consulted at the Pritikin Institute in Santa Monica, California, where clients paid ten thousand dollars a month to take part in a controlled diet and exercise program. Although the tuition for the program far exceeded the cost of attending the most expensive private university in America, I frequently found participants sneaking out for hamburgers and French fries at a corner stand. These were all highly motivated people sent to Pritikin by their doctors because of serious, life-threatening health problems, but positive motivation clearly wasn't enough to help them resist phantom hunger. As you know, all dieting programs depend on positive motivation, ignoring the obvious: that there's such power in the emotional forces underlying the desire to binge or overeat that if you don't expose those forces and conquer them, you'll always be at their mercy - you'll always have weight problems.
How to End Emotional Hunger
Although diets can provide important nutritional information, we know that diets don't and can't work if they don't address the real reason why you overeat. This program will help you to recognize the difference between emotional hunger and physical hunger, and will teach you how to deal with each of the emotions that trigger your phantom hunger so that you eat only when you need to, not when distress triggers your cravings.
How much of your hunger do you think is emotional rather than biological?
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 1:48:35 PM | 2 COMMENTS
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 2011
Why People Binge
It was determined that binge eating is the most common eating disorder, in a study conducted by Harvard University in February 2007. It is more common than either anorexia or bulimia and yet it is not discussed or understood fully. If you're a binge eater, you're not alone. It is something that millions of people struggle with.
There are three main reasons why people binge:
- to cope with painful feelings.
- to create the illusion of feeling good.
- to feel "safe" or to shut out the world.
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Binges appeal to people in two ways. One, is that they provide something that I call the "Food Trance." The food trance is the mind numbing experience that binging offers. Here are some of ways that people describe the food trance:
"In a food trance; I belong. I fit in. I'm somebody. I'm in love. I matter. I'm not inadequate. Happier times are remembered. I'm soothed."
"If I am all doped up on a food high, nothing else matters."
"The perfect escape for the moment. When I concentrate on what I am eating I don't have to deal with other emotions."
When you read some of the euphoric descriptions of the Food Trance you can understand why food can become an over-the-counter form of self-medication. It is legal and readily accessible to anyone who wants to make it their drug of choice. It makes you feel good for a little while. That little bit of relief feels worth it when you're running from an uncomfortable feeling (it can be depression, stress, loneliness, boredom, anger, rejection). For some people, they'll even push off their feelings and "deal" with them later on by binging. I call this a delayed binge. You might be frustrated at work and spend the whole day thinking about what you're going to eat when you get home.
When your mind is screaming with unpleasant thoughts, you're willing to run into the comfort of food as a temporary safe-haven-anything for a few minutes of quiet. However, when you shut down your mind too many times with food, binging becomes a compulsion. That means your mind always believes it needs food to deal with stress. Once that happens, you can't control what you eat no matter how hard you try.
The second way that binging appeals to people, seems paradoxical on the surface. When the binge is over, you're filled with regret. Your mind plays a tape of how awful it was that you gave in to the binge. You probably know the words well. But that tape feels better (and more familiar) to your mind than the one that talks about the things you're afraid to face (that could be relationship issues, low self-esteem, career issues, unmet needs). The post-binge guilt gives you something else to think about.
Consider my patient "Roxy." She is 45 and has three children. She told me about a frustrating day at the mall with her sixteen-year-old daughter. Her response to the frustration was to binge on a whole box of donuts.
She told me, "I was so mad at her, what else could I do?" Roxy is very smart, but in spite of my prompting and questioning, she couldn't think of any other option but to binge. Her pattern of binging by stuffing down feelings with food was so deeply ingrained in her mind that it short-circuited her common sense. Binging felt like the only way to dial down her frustration and rid herself of angry thoughts toward her daughter. More than that, her guilt about the binge stopped her from feeling guilty about not being a good-enough mother - a mother that would intuitively know how to handle the situation with her daughter in a graceful and effective way.
If you're a binge eater you probably already know the painful cycle of desperately wanting to binge, giving in to a binge, feeling remorse after a binge, and then promising yourself a binge will never happen again. Then you hate yourself when it does inevitably happen again. It's this cycle you need to understand before you can eat sensibly. Attempting to diet just sets you up for failure. First, you must understand how compulsive eating has been benefiting you. If you understand why you depend on binge eating, you'll be in a better place to let the pattern go and find better ways to deal with emotional hunger. Shrink Yourself will help you understand why you binge and more than that, it will give you the tools to stop.
You must understand that there is a part of you that feels afraid to let go of the binging cycle because you don't know what will happen to you if you don't have food to quiet your mind. I'm here to tell you that learning how to quiet one's mind is an essential part of adult development. When you learn how to do it, you're ready to give up binge eating. Not only will you lose weight, but the whole quality of your life can change for the better, too.
Can you identify the primary feeling or situation that triggers you to binge?
TAKE THE BINGE EATING DIAGNOSTIC
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 1:29:24 PM | 4 COMMENTS
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 2011
5 Consequences of Emotional Eating
Everyone knows about the health risks of having poor eating habits and/or being overweight. However, some people don't realize that this health problem is fueled by emotional eating. Without understanding emotional eating, staying on a diet, losing weight and keeping it off is virtually impossible. Emotional Eating (which includes eating too much and binging) has many hidden consequences. Here are five you should take into consideration.
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1. Emotional Eating Can Damage Your Relationships
Relationship stress is one of the most common triggers for over eating. When there's tension, or in the aftermath of a fight, food seems like a safe haven. Once in a while, this escape into flavor is normal. However, the more accustomed you get to the relief, the sooner and more frequently you will turn to food when the going gets rough in a relationship.
You may find yourself making a trip to the kitchen at the very first sign of tension, instead of working through your differences in the living room with your spouse, friend, or family member. As time goes on, problems pile up in the relationship, tensions build, and tempers flair. The habit of turning to food for comfort gets so ingrained that you don't learn the necessary skills of communicating, getting needs met and deepening intimacy. Over time your relationships don't get better, you just get bigger.
2. Emotional Eating Can Cause You To Neglect Your Ambitions
Many people overeat to relieve frustration about where their life is going. You might feel stuck or under-appreciated, and turn to food as a reward. When this habit gets out of hand, you will begin to neglect your ambitions. Instead of going out there and pursuing long-terms goals, you may more and more frequently turn to food for fulfillment.
One of our members, Susan, shared an interesting story with us on this point. She said that most of her life she wanted to be writer, but she always criticized herself for not being "good enough." She felt stuck. Her ambitions felt out of reach and she began turning to food for comfort. After a while, she stopped writing altogether and used food as a way to push down her disappointment. Instead of working on her craft she just gave up. Luckily, Susan was able to break this pattern. She saw how emotional eating was interfering with any chance she had of reaching her goals. When she got her emotional eating under control she started to write again.
3. Emotional Eating Bottles Up Your Feelings
It's obvious that emotional eating pushes down unpleasant feelings. In the moment, this seems like a great thing. "Wow, I get to eat and not feel like crap!" It feels like a win-win.
However, feelings need to be addressed. They demand to be addressed. You might be able to avoid them for a while, but the important ones will keep coming back, in new and more unpleasant ways. The more you overeat to deal with your emotions the more emotions pile up in the background, waiting to come out. And the bigger that pile gets, the more overwhelming it becomes.
4. Emotional Eating Makes Your Fears Seems Larger Than Life
Everyone has something they don't want to think about. It could be a challenge waiting on the horizon, or a particular shortcoming you think you might have. Many emotional eaters use food as a way to handle these sorts of fears and doubts. Rather than address the concern with practical, no-nonsense solutions and steps, you retreat into food for comfort.
The habit of numbing yourself with food prevents you from facing your issues directly. Then your unresolved issues take on a life of their own. Rather than being a simple challenge or self-doubt, they begin to grow and grow until they seem impossible to face. When a “fear” feels larger than life, eating becomes even more alluring.
5. Emotional Eating Can Make It Harder To Love Yourself
Anyone that truly knows the pain and struggle of a food obsession knows how much baggage comes along with it. Much in the same way relapsing smokers and alcoholics beat themselves up and belittle themselves for their lack of control, emotional eaters feel like their struggle is a moral failing, something that's wrong with them. Many describe themselves as "failures" or "losers." Despite having achieved many great things in their life, the emotional eating habit determines how they feel about themselves. This negative self-image leads to more emotional eating. It's a vicious cycle that robs you of your self-esteem.
Conclusion
The bottom line is that these consequences of emotional eating are real and difficult to bear. The good news is you can end emotional eating and that it's even easier than it feels. The key is to start thinking about “why” you want to eat, rather than “what” you want to eat. Pay attention to your feelings and use your mind to sort them out before you turn to food. Then start making small, positive changes in the way you respond to tension and stress in your life.
Instead of eating after a fight, go to your spouse and talk about it. Instead of feeling frustrated, find a small thing you can do to move closer to your goals. These small steps will begin to snowball, just like emotional eating, but in a positive direction. The more you make small, positive changes, the less you will eat, which will make you feel better, which will make you eat less, which will make you feel better, and so on.
In what way are any of these consequences of emotional eating affecting your life?
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 5:04:28 PM | 7 COMMENTS
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2011
Happy Valentines Day!
We have a gift for you. And no, it's not flowers or candy or jewelry or lingerie. However, it is something we hope will bring more love and joy into your life.
Let’s start with the origin of Valentine's Day. Not the official history, but your personal history. Embedded in the minds of every adult is the grade school experience of making little Valentine cards for your classmates. You had to figure out what to say and to whom to give them to. And if you had a small crush, whether to admit it or not. You wondered or worried about who was going to write a card for you. In your small person’s brain you were already thinking about rejection and disappointment.
Then there was also the issue of popularity. Who were the popular boys? Who were the most popular girls? And who were not! There were (and probably still are) plenty of tears, sore stomachs and broken hearts on Valentine's Day in school rooms across the country. That's the true origin of Valentine's Day for most of us.
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I see many of my patients, and members of the Shrink Yourself community, still suffering with self-doubt from those early years instead of building confidence in themselves. They continue to wonder whether or not they could ever make it to the “A list.” They wonder whether or not their families were good enough. They wonder whether or not their sister is the only one with enough social skills to become the social butterfly. They wonder whether or not there was (or still is) something wrong with them, that makes them unworthy or unlovable.
In many cases I can trace the compulsive eating habit back to those early formative years. The self image that was set up in the brain as a child, still continues to adversely influence the adult 30-40-50 years later. It didn’t all happen on Valentine's Day, but it did happen in those years, for that's when self-doubt and questioning and issues of popularity and being loved are worked out in the social network of kindergarten and the early years of grade school.
If you are currently having weight issues you are by definition struggling with the same kind of popularity concerns. Your weight is a heavy load on your self-image. And since there is such a prejudice against being overweight, your weight may be keeping you off of your own and/or others “A list.” You also become less popular with yourself when you are not proud about the way you eat or the repeated slips in discipline that are the direct result of emotional eating. These are the issues that link emotional eating to Valentine's Day.
Our gift to you is the “Emotional Eating 101” eBook. Click here to open it in your Browser.
It will help you get a better understanding of your emotional eating patterns and start you on a journey to do something about them. You can reclaim your confidence and pride in yourself. You can authentically improve your self-image and you will significantly diminish your self-doubts. As you learn to love yourself better, you can look forward to sharing more love with others, and not just on Valentine's Day.
What are your recollections of past Valentine's Days?
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 4:27:07 PM | 2 COMMENTS
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 04, 2011
Take a Warm Bath
Just the other day a member asked me to explain how taking a warm bath was going to help her with the emotional eating habit that caused her to recently put on twenty pounds. I was puzzled at first, but then I remembered it was one of the items on a list in the second session about “what else” you could do when you feel emotionally overwhelmed.
Taking a warm bath isn’t the cure for emotional eating, but taking a warm bath is a way to give yourself a little quiet time to calm down and think about things. Clear thinking is the essential process for curing yourself of a food obsession. There are dozens of other ways to stop and think, the simplest being to PAUSE, feel the present moment and then think about. It’s important to interrupt the automatic quick reach for food that you might be using to stuff and numb yourself temporarily. Once you start stuffing it is too late to think. And you will not find the right solution, without thinking.
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Whatever strategy works for you to stop the automatic behavior long enough to pause and collect your thoughts, is the right way. It can be a bath, a walk, a phone call, a mantra or even a game of peek-a-boo with a toddler.
I have had many patients come into a session and start telling me what they ate, how much they ate, and then comment on how they didn’t even pause at all but just kept on eating mindlessly. They presented this as if there was something I could or should do about that. It always made me feel as if I was taking the place of the parent who told them not to eat so much when they were the children. Now they were eating too much and were either defying me or asking me to please stop them.
I tell them that I can’t help them if they can’t do the minimum for themselves, and that is totally within their capacity and control. I am certainly not going to tell them what to eat or how much to eat or admonish them if they slip and happen to eat too much. That’s an eye opener for most. They realize that there is no one to do battle with, no one who has the magic potion, no one who can save them and that the only way to get where they want to go is to put their own intelligence to work.
It’s the same conflict that every prospective member of Shrink Yourself has to resolve before they come to that critical realization. They read about the issue, learn about the principles, and listen to the stories of others all in hopes that that knowledge will somehow be enough. It is enough to motivate you, and the knowledge is what you need to guide you, but none of that makes any difference until you actually pause before the emotional eating reflex clicks in, collect your thoughts, and begin to wrestle with the emotion that you would ordinarily want to run away from.
When you pause and think right before you are about to eat too much, it is an emotional wrestling match that greets you. There will be a tug-a-war between staying with your feelings long enough to get a realistic perspective on what is bothering you; and the impulse to numb yourself with food and bury what is bothering you as quickly as you can. The purpose of the pause is to make you conscious of just this point in the process. This opens the door to the next insight, and the next one, and the next one after that!
It is the simple truth that as adults we must face and solve or decide to live with everything that bothers us, and we can do that best by using the most intelligent part of our minds. However, I also know that fear and helplessness are strong emotions that can rule us temporarily and subvert that truth. What you want to do is be sure to not let fear and the false state of helplessness permanently interfere with using your best intelligence. There is less to fear by being honest with yourself, and more to fear by not being honest with yourself.
Remember when you were a child and were afraid of the shadows on the wall that looked like monsters. Take a warm bath and and start proving to yourself that there are no more monsters, just real problems in living.
What problem in living has become a monster in your life?
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 2:05:23 PM | 5 COMMENTS
FRIDAY, JANUARY 28, 2011
Putting Ambivalence to Rest
There was a statement that caught my attention in a recent article from the Washington Post’s “Eat, Drink and Be Healthy“ column. The author of a new book "Fat Boy, Thin Man" (2010) told about his success in overcoming emotional eating. He said that once he became serious about breaking the emotional eating habit, he had to acknowledge that his own personal development was suspended when he started to use food for relief and reward. He decided that if he was to sustain his weight loss success, he would have to pay just as much attention to his personal development issues as he would have to do work on nutrition, new eating habits, and exercise.
In all of my experience with the Shrink Yourself program and with the patients that I treat I find this principle to be absolutely correct and essential. I see it every day.
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Just yesterday I saw a patient who was suffering great anguish about her binges. At the same time she was so ambivalent about accepting help. I insisted we talk only about her ambivalence until we understood it. In an obvious way she was simply looking for magic, the old kind of magic that a child might look for by letting a parent know how much pain she was in and hoping that the parent could fix it. More accurately, the child believes the parent can fix anything, so she was really hoping that I would fix it.
Of course, I cannot. I can not tell her cravings to go away and I can not stand by her side every moment of the day to make sure that she eats the right things. Almost everyone who comes to the Shrink Yourself program is hoping for the magical fix. That’s human nature. But that’s really only a cover-up for something deeper. I saw it clearly in my patient. She insisted on the magical fix because she did not trust herself to follow through and do what she needs to do to understand and master the emotional eating habit. She was afraid of success. Her greatest fear was that she would lose weight and try again to have a fulfilling romantic relationship. Of course there’s nothing wrong with that. But for her there was something wrong since she was predicting that every romantic relationship that was possible for her would end in failure. She was sure she would suffer such great hurt that it would take her months or years to recover. Her catastrophe image was in full bloom.
That’s the personal development issue. She starting emotional eating because of her disappointments. She stopped trying and stopped learning. Now she has to pay attention to this piece of development. She has to learn how to have a successful romantic relationship. If she is not willing to try to do that, then her pain and loneliness and emotional hunger will not go away, and eating to soothe that pain and fill that gap will be something she has to live with.
I tell this story so that you may find your own story. Think about your ambivalence about success. Trace your ambivalence to your fear of success. Try to identify the personal development work you need to do but are afraid to do. If you have read and followed the material on this site you probably know what you need to do. If you can’t remember it for very long or put it into practice then you can be sure that you have ambivalence about succeeding.
Ask yourself why you are afraid to succeed. Explore your ambivalence. Ambivalence will set off a binge. Ambivalence is the source of the self sabotage that makes you so angry at yourself. Ambivalence will stop you from even starting a program like this.
Are you ready to identify your personal development issue?
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 1:40:42 PM | 5 COMMENTS
SATURDAY, JANUARY 22, 2011
Is it Time to Re-Think Your Past?
(Technorati claim token: 9VJU4PZKUKRZ.) I invite you to review, re-examine, reconsider, and re-evaluate the issues from childhood that may be fueling your emotional eating habits. Feelings of failure, worthlessness and inadequacy are common stigmas that we unconsciously carry over into adulthood.
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It is important to use your adult problem-solving mind to re-think past events and assumptions, in order to transform those feelings of helplessness that trigger you to overeat or obsess about food. Once you are committed to putting childhood's traumas into the adult life cycle perspective, every experience becomes a part of the healing process.
I encourage you to revisit this blog from a few months ago:
Emotional Hunger Points to the Past
As you consider the following question:
What childhood event do you need to "re-think" with an adult perspective?
And share your thoughts with others on Facebook:
www.Facebook.com/ShrinkYourselfCommunity
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 7:40:42 PM | 1 COMMENTS
FRIDAY, JANUARY 14, 2011
Successful New Year's Resolutions
We all make New Year’s resolutions, and often these resolutions involve weight loss. However, many of us quickly lose traction before we achieve our objectives. In this week’s blog I will answer the following 5 questions that will help you stay on track and reach your goals.
1. What are the psychological and emotional reasons behind these failures?
2. What is the biggest mistake people make when making a resolution?
3. How do you set reasonable, healthy expectations when you resolve to lose weight or shape up at this time of year or any other time of year?
4. What kind of support should you seek to help you achieve your goals?
5. What’s the most important thing you can do to improve your chances of success before you make a healthy lifestyle change?
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1. What are the psychological and emotional reasons behind these failures?
The biggest factor by far is emotional or stress eating. If you are in the habit of over using food as a form of self medication when you’re in distress (overwhelmed, anxious, angry, bored or lonely,) then you are emotionally dependent on food to regulate your emotions. The instant you make your New Year's resolution you are in conflict with yourself. Your resolve may be absolutely serious and very real at the moment but when the stresses of everyday life throw you into a tailspin, even the greatest motivations will be sacrificed in favor of restoring your emotional equilibrium. You think forward with your head but respond in the moment to your feelings.
Think of it this way. For most parts of your life you can simply do what you intend to do. You brush your teeth, go to the store, keep your appointments. There is little or no distance between the mental intention and the act of doing. When you resolve to lose weight, you are making a simple clear healthy choice. There aren’t any valid reasons not to do it, so you expect and hope that your intention will carry the day. It doesn’t work that way. When you begin to put that choice into action you discover that changing an eating pattern is a psychological piece of work.
There is another, probably hidden, part of you that does not really want to go along with your New Years resolution. Because food is so deeply rooted in family dynamics, when you change your eating habits, you disturb these early associations. Since food is every one’s first form of love and safety, you can see how familiar eating habits can provide comfort even when they may not be healthy.
What unhealthy eating habit did you “inherit” from childhood?
2. What is the biggest mistake people make when making a resolution?
The biggest mistake people make is ignoring the emotional eating factor. You hope to override it with good intentions and strong motivations and a new program that is guaranteed to work this time. You may be embarrassed about your weight or worried about your health or just want to look better or move with more grace. These are all strong powerful motivations that will drive you for a while. In the commonsense world, these motivations should prevail and take you all the way to your goal.
But there is this other force inside you that will throw up a smoke screen of a thousand excuses in order to justify going back to those eating patterns that make you feel safe, patterns that have probably existed for decades, and maybe since childhood.
When you make a New Year’s resolution to lose weight, you are setting yourself up for failure if you don't recognize and take into account the fact that your overeating habits are the adult form of a child’s security blanket. The security blanket made the child feel safe, but it didn’t make the child safe. The same with food.
The safety and psychological hiding place that over eating or binging provides is only an ILLUSION. Once you really understand this, you can change your eating habits and reach your weight goals. This is why 95% of diets fail. If you don't deal with it, your chances of being successful for very long are slim.
How does food make you feel safe?
3. How do you set reasonable, healthy expectations when you resolve to lose weight or shape up at this time of year or any other time of year?
You have to pay attention to reality, which means you’ll need to start eating healthy, making sure not to put yourself in the position of feeling deprived which only sets up for the next failure. Don’t think of losing weight as a contest to win, because that means you are sure to lose. Think of it as a decision to be healthy, and that it is your responsibility to create a program that works for you, and that you are the expert. Don’t set an artificial weight goal to meet some event deadline.
Remember you are losing weight for you because that is the healthy thing to do, not to please others or to impress others. If you keep all that in mind, you’ll be happy with a modest weight gain in the beginning that is tied directly to conscious healthy decision making. Once that is established, the weight will come off much faster than you can imagine. And don’t rely on exercise to lose weight. You can undo an hour of vigorous exercise in two minutes eating junk food. You should exercise to be healthy and enjoy your body. To lose weight, you need to focus more on what you put and let into your body... physically, emotionally and mentally.
What negative emotional or mental energy are you currently “binging” on?
4. What kind of support should you seek to help you achieve your goals?
Surround yourself with people who support healthy eating, who enjoy eating right, and are proud of making good food choices. A good weight loss partner who thinks the way you do can be very useful. The most important support people are those who respect your need to be the one who makes the decisions, including indulging on special occasions without feeling guilty or like a failure. Stay away from those who want to tell you what to do.
Do you have a family member, friend or co-worker that will listen compassionately to your “story” as you experience the challenges of changing your eating habits?
5. What’s the most important thing you can do to improve your chances of success before you make a healthy lifestyle change?
The most important thing you can do is be honest with yourself. If you are too distraught, scared of attempting to change your eating habits, just wishing and hoping but secretly sure you are going to fail, don’t do it now just because it is a new year. But if you are tired of yo-yo dieting, and tired of being obsessed and controlled by food, and are really ready to start a new part of your life by understanding rather than avoiding your emotional life, then make a serious commitment to a program that can guide you safely, step-by-step, to that goal. When you decide to make a commitment, then stick with it by seeing it as a psychological growth adventure which just happens to give you the added benefit of getting rid of your cravings and compulsive eating.
How would you like to grow personally as an adult?
See more at Everyday Health's New Year, New You Motivational Expert Panel
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 7:35:18 PM | 59 COMMENTS
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 31, 2010
Another Year... Another Diet?
Studies have shown that only about 12% of New Years Resolutions are actually achieved. However, people are more likely to be successful when they make their goals public and get support from their friends. Since diets fail most of the time, and will power doesn’t seem to work for very long, what makes a good New Years Resolution?
Breaking the emotional eating habit is the only way to lose weight and keep it off, but to do that you have to be willing to deal with yourself honestly, which includes feeling your feelings and understanding your emotions and facing your problems.
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If you are overweight, you are an emotional eater, because being overweight means you are storing more fat than you need, and the only way to do that is to eat more than you need. When you eat more than you need you are not taking good care of your body. You certainly don’t intend to be overweight and you certainly don’t intentionally want to take poor care of your body, but your good intentions are not strong enough to carry the day for you. Your habit of using food for emotional relief or reward wins the day because you are not confident that you can handle your strong emotions and life stresses on your own.
In this sense, you have not yet achieved full ownership of your adult mind and body because you can’t seem to carry out your good intentions to eat healthy, exercise more and lose weight. This means that there is a piece of personal development work necessary to do, in order to break the emotional eating habit. Be honest with yourself. You may be too distraught or scattered now to settle into the kind of commitment that is needed to break the emotional eating habit. If you are not ready now, then make a resolution to get ready rather than a resolution to go on another diet.
However, if you are ready to be successful at achieving your weight lose goals, then it’s time to make some personal changes and upgrade your self-esteem. The Shrink Yourself Program will help you address the real issues that trigger your emotional need to eat in a step-by-step way so you can prove to yourself that you can make, keep and benefit from whatever intentions you set for yourself.
Are you ready to share your New Year’s Resolution here
or on our Community Facebook Page?
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 7:26:26 PM | 5 COMMENTS
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 23, 2010
Important Insights for the Holidays
There are two kinds of being overwhelmed and two kinds of sadness during the holidays. One kind is appropriate and realistic, the other makes you eat too much or binge.
It's easy to be overwhelmed during the holiday season. There is so much to do and so many people to see and so many relationships to monitor. If you can stay in the reality of the 2010 Christmas season, you can be overwhelmed and still have a lot of fun. You might need to put out more energy and devote more time to make it all work out, but you won’t feel powerless, which means you won’t have to eat too much.
The same thing is true about sadness. Realistic sadness is about the people who are missing this year, as well as about the passage of time and the realization of another year passing by. That kind of sadness does not lead to overeating.
But if you begin to slip back into strongly felt memories of the past, which is what always happens this time of the year, you may lose your realistic perspective, and end up feeling so powerless that you are compelled to eat too much, and then you beat yourself up, and certainly that is not fun.
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The memories that are stored in your brain and invited in during the holidays are not so much memories of loss or of being overwhelmed, but memories of not being understood or not being treated well or not having had the childhood that you were supposed to have. Those thoughts make you feel powerless and helpless because what is done is done. It’s these kind of old memories that turn into the uncontrollable hunger and cravings that end in a binge.
In order to make use of this insight (which is to distinguish between current thoughts and old distorted memories) you have to practice the pause technique which I talk about all the time. You have to pause in order to give yourself enough time to think clearly, and sort out the memories and feelings that are aroused by the holiday from the reality of your life, and your current options. You can feel a little overwhelmed and a little sad and observe that you are NOT also powerless. This is your best protection against an unwanted binge.
One more tip. Your sudden burst of hunger can be turned into the best opportunity to sort out what is going on in your mind. When the burst of hunger occurs, it means your memory is active and strong, so take a look at your memory instead of eating. It will be much more satisfying.
The Shrink Yourself Team wishes you a Happy and Thoughtful Holiday Season!
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 12:46:20 PM | 1 COMMENTS
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 10, 2010
Quick Tips for a Happier Holiday
These are hard times for everyone. Even though there is a cloud of uncertainty hanging over the country, it’s still time to celebrate with family and friends. It’s not just foreign affairs that challenge us, it’s issues much closer to home. “Modern Families” the T.V. show, says it all with humor. There are more modern mixed families than traditional families. What's Christmas like when your children go to your divorced spouse’s celebration and you go to a friends house? What's it like when you don't have enough money to buy presents? And all the other challenges that come with the territory this time of year.
We created a short program to help you create a four part plan that helps you face this season’s difficult challenges. We want to help you face something rather than hide in food. We want to give you a gift, a better opportunity to have a joyful Christmas season. Holiday times can be joyful but they can also breed depression, and depression leads to over-eating, and over-eating or binging causes self-contempt, and self-contempt leads back to depression. There’s the potential for a vicious cycle, and here’s one way to make sure you don’t go there.
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The plan you create will help you identify and face your anticipated challenges, prepare yourself in advance, and give yourself time to create an adaptive strategy. With this readiness, you can be more effective and start to build a strong base of confidence in yourself!
The best thing you can do for yourself is to start working on your emotional eating pattern right now, before the New Year when you usually make your resolution to really do something about your weight. Beginning to have control now and knowing that you are doing something about it, will give you that extra momentum and confidence that just might make the difference for next year.
You can still eat plenty at Christmas. Even if you eat a little too much that will be okay, as long as you are making a conscious decision to indulge yourself on this special occasion. If you can begin to trust yourself by starting to be more conscious about what's going on within you, you'll probably be able to prevent some or all of those awful blazing binges that make you hate yourself and rob you of the opportunity to enjoy the holidays.
Why not give yourself the gift of self confidence and self control?
QUICK TIPS FOR A HAPPIER HOLIDAY
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 8:29:22 PM | 1 COMMENTS
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 03, 2010
Holiday Health and Emotional Healing
There is a nursery rhyme that begins: Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat. Please put a penny in the old man’s hat! As we talk about the holidays, let’s hope that only the goose is gaining weight, and that your insight into emotional eating keeps you from going off track during this very special, very tempting time.
The Thanksgiving holiday is over and just a memory. But the temptation for an emotional eater continues to gain momentum for the rest of the year. Because anticipation causes more overeating and binging than an actual holiday celebration, the best thing you can do to deal with the prolonged holiday season is to keep yourself prepared. If you can remain conscious and proactive, you can defend yourself from your emotional eating triggers and give yourself the gift of time and thoughtfulness. And if, on January 1, you make a resolution to lose weight, it will seem more possible because you have not gained weight during December.
Over half the people who answered our questionnaire about family dynamics identified a very familiar cluster of holiday challenges. These “anticipations” included comparing themselves unfavorably to others, feeling less valuable or loved than other members of their family, and becoming very insecure when around family members. Notice that each of these issues points to some form of emotional hunger.
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When you anticipate these things happening during the holiday season, you are actually keeping new things from happening because all you can recognize is the familiar pain of your old family dynamic. And the emotional eating that you use to control this anticipatory anxiety is a terrible waste. When you take a minute to identify that you are feeling anxious without reacting to it, you can use this instant of insight to prevent yourself from indulging in your old patterns of behavior.
“During the holidays, particularly around my family, I tend to get overly sensitive and act overly defensive. My insecurities flair up and I feel less important and less loved. I start to compare myself to others and become hypercritical of myself. When I am off balance like this, my moods swing from anger, through jealousy and towards depression. In anticipation of this familiar and uncomfortable pattern, I find myself over eating to alleviate my anxiety.”
“What I need to do is remember that the situation does NOT need to be perfect, and that my connection to my family is important and often requires compromising. I can take a step back and observe the interactions without being overly judgmental of others or myself. I can just be "me", and let others be who they are, it's not my job to change or "fix" anyone except myself.”
Here are a few things to remember as the excitement of the holidays builds.
1. Most of your disaster predictions about Thanksgiving were probably blown out of proportion.
2. There are things you can do to prevent or mitigate what you anticipate might happen.
3. If you gained weight in anticipation of a disaster that didn’t happen, you don’t want to make that mistake again.
4. You can find better ways of dealing with your emotional hunger than closing down your mind with food.
I can tell you in confidence, that there is always a difference between anticipated predictions and what actually happens. Reviewing this gap is your opportunity to do some emotional healing and to enjoy the season as a time for celebration and renewal.
Are you ready to make this a healthy holiday season?
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 5:57:50 PM | 4 COMMENTS
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2010
Holiday Stuffing: More Family, More Feelings and More Food
The holidays are coming. The turkey sits tan and proud and shiny. Sweet potatoes of amber and molasses rest in the covered bowl. Pumpkin pies tempt and hold great promise. Tis the season of Thanksgiving and once again you will see if your pal... self control... will be present at the holiday table.
Have you ever wondered why you keep your face buried in marsh mellows when you're at the family table? Maybe it's time to take a look. For starters, check out the faces that surround you, a good place to look for clues. Pieces of your history are etched on each of them. For most of us, going home for Thanksgiving takes us on an internal journey through our childhood. Both the child in you and the adult are in conflict, and they will both be at the table.
It’s going to be hard if you are an emotional eater. But we’re here to help. We’ve created two free interactive tools to help you enjoy the family gathering, and your meal without stuffing yourself with feelings and food.
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The family can be an emotional hotplate at holiday time. If your inner child takes over, you’ll come too close and get burned. The two mini sessions we created are designed to strengthen your adult, and let you watch your child without letting him or her take over. They are designed to prepare you for the difficulties you anticipate, by thinking ahead about what might happen and what you can do about it.
If you are a Shrink Yourself member or have read my book, you know that when you feel compelled to binge or overeat, you are not only feeling powerless to control your eating, but you are feeling emotionally powerless. But if you are prepared, and can keep your adult perspective in the midst of a family experience, you won’t be emotionally powerless. You may experience strong emotions, but you won’t be powerless, and you won’t be burnt.
The first interactive tool is called; 7 Family Dynamics that Trigger Emotional Eating. There are “things” happening when the family gets together that can drive you to drink too much or overeat. Here’s what we cover in this first tool. You’ll end up with a short report you can print and keep with you to help prepare you with insight and perspective.
The Pecking Order. In every family there is a pecking order where someone is perceived to be more important or to deserve more respect, time, or consideration than others.
Envy and Jealousy. In every group there is going to be some differential where some are better educated or more verbal or stronger or more handsome, or slimmer, or more beautiful, or have more accomplished children or a better marriage or better health or are younger or have more opportunities, etc.
Shifting Alliances. In every family there are shifting alliances as people grow older and free themselves from roles that they played in the family at an earlier date.
Insufferable Narcissism. There is narcissism; and there is Narcissism. You may not use that particular word very often but you will know it when you feel it
The Transfer of Power. As our parents get older, the leadership in a family often moves to adult children.
Vulnerable Self Esteem. Some people feel insecure and vulnerable when they are in a family setting.
Estrangement of a Family Member. When one family member is estranged, the family feels like it has failed as a unit.
The second tool is called; Preventing Conflict with Someone. This will help you focus on the one person who might be the most difficult for you to interact with during the Thanksgiving holiday. It’s short and to the point, and will give you a forum to prepare for what might happen and how best to handle it. If it is not too disturbing a thought, you can even have some fun with this tool and play with your worst case scenario, and send it to other family members for some feedback.
During the family gatherings there are dozens of raw sensitivities, any one of them could set off a cascade of events and conversations that ruin the day. All the unfinished business of childhood that is present on Thanksgiving day acts like a magnet to pull you back into your most immature self, which undoes and unwinds all the magnificent autonomy and independence of adulthood that you have worked so hard to sustain during the rest of the year.
It is a long and arduous journey to get to the point that we are self defining and relatively immune from the opinions of others. If you don’t hold onto that achievement, you’ll be stuffing yourself until you're ready to pop. You’ll be stuffing down unprocessed feelings and emotions. While three helpings of potatoes might bring immediate relief and comfort, chances are a sense of defeat has already climbed upon your shoulder.
You can look on this Thanksgiving dynamic as a recipe for disaster while you are walking through a minefield of sensitivities and easily hurt feelings. Or you can look at it as a challenge, which it is, but also as an opportunity to revisit old patterns. When you keep your “adult” present, you can remake a part of yourself that has been anchored in the family history.
Remember, it's not the food or social pressure that will make you eat too much, it's your history that has come alive and invites you for a visit. If you face your history and work it out with your family, you will have a wonderful opportunity to grow from the experience. And that new insight and personal strength will be plenty to give thanks for.
Are you prepared to eat the turkey stuffing without stuffing your feelings?
CLICK HERE FOR A HAPPIER HOLIDAY!
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 6:23:06 PM | 6 COMMENTS
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2010
You Are Not Alone
I have said before that emotional eating is something that we all do to some extent. But when you come to Shrink Yourself we invite you to take a diagnostic that will let you see the “X-ray” of your particular relationship to food. This is the first step to breaking the emotional eating habit. While you are unique, I would like to offer you a look at the composite picture of the emotional eating profile and share my insights. As we look closer at the most common answers below, you may find yourself similar to others or you may find yourself having different issues. Ultimately however I am sure it will let you see that you are not alone.
Frustration, Food and Failure
Does this sound like you?
I would like to lose weight in order to fit into my clothes better, become physically healthier and have more energy. I would also like to look good and attract more attention, approval and respect from other people. I think that, if I were to lose weight, I would become less critical of myself and improve my self esteem.
However, when someone criticizes me, takes me for granted or misunderstands me, it hurts, so I turn to the comfort of food to make myself feel better. When I feel angry, insecure or frustrated, I tend to give into my cravings and find myself binging on junk food in private.
Also when I am anxious or depressed, eating makes me feel nurtured and gives me a sense of satisfaction and control. But then afterwards, I feel like a self-sabotaging failure and incapable of losing weight.
This pattern of feeling frustrated, turning to food and then thinking that I failed, keeps me swimming in a pond of shame and guilt. Then the “perfectionist” in me just gives up, even though I know I am not getting enough satisfaction out of life!
In order to do the work of breaking the emotional eating habit (and yes, it does take work), you have to know what you hope to achieve by all this work. That is, what motivates you to change?
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The strongest motivation to break the emotional eating habit is to have a direct effect on your body. The top five motivations for those who take the diagnostic are to fit into clothes better; feel better physically; have more energy; prevent future health problems and to be more healthy.
At first I was surprised that “to fit into clothes” was the top item over to be more healthy. But on reflection it makes a lot of sense. Every time you don’t fit in your clothes, you are uncomfortable and this pain causes you to turn against yourself. I have met no one who thinks of themselves as “fat” and actually likes their own body. The discomfort of tight clothing and the awareness it, is a strong motivating force to do something about the emotional eating that caused it.
When we look at losing weight as it relates to other people. Our responders most often want to be more attractive to other people in general and of course to their significant other.
There was no surprise in this context because the emotional eating diagnostic engenders trust and honesty. But if you would ask this same question in another context I think you would hear a different answer. Most people like to think they are just losing weight for themselves because doing it to please someone else seems like a submission to social pressure and all those who have pushed you to lose weight in the past. The answer to this question simply reminds us that there is such a thing as human nature, and all humans are social beings, and getting the admiration of love from others is an essential and unchangeable part of life.
The next set of motives to lose weight has to do with feeling better about yourself, not about your body, but about your mind and your emotions. Here are the top 4; to have better self-esteem,to be less critical of myself, to stop food from being a source of conflict in my life, and to relieve some of my moodiness, depression or anxiety.
In the world of motivations, the ones that are usually the most immediate and felt the strongest are the most compelling and help people follow through to their goals. These four motives reflect the pain of being stuck in the endless cycle of yo-yo dieting and diet failures which are the inevitable consequences of emotional eating. Emotional eating takes its the toll on your self esteem, fuels your self criticism, and has a pervasive effect on one’s daily life.
If emotional eating and excess weight cause so much pain, and there are so many good reasons to stop, why is it so hard to end the vicious cycle? Can you related to any of these?
Part of me wants to keep eating the way I do because...
1. food calms me down when I'm angry or frustrated
2. food is the only thing that lets me feel in control
3. food keeps me occupied when I'm bored
4. when I'm lonely food makes me feel better
5. I don't want anybody or anything to stop me from eating what I want
These top five answers tell the under part of the story, and hopefully add weight to what I have been saying about emotional eating all along. Over eating is a way of self medicating, it is a short term way of feeling better. It is seen as emergency self care for a bruised set of emotions. And it has tenacity. These are all strong statements, and strong motives to keep the emotional eating habit, and in most cases, until examined, are far stronger than all of the good positive motives stated above.
These last two statements point to deeper issues involved with overcoming an eating disorder. When you start the Shrink Yourself program you have to be willing to look at your self doubts, fears and stubborn defiance in order to end your emotional eating habits once and for all. Most people don’t believe that they can do that productively and safely.
1. I feel frustrated, bogged down, and not getting enough satisfaction out of life.
2. I am a perfectionist or very critical of myself and I bothered by self doubts.
The hundreds of testimonials we receive regularly from Shrink Yourself members tell us that almost everyone started the program scared that they would be putting themselves into danger if they started down the path to getting better. They anticipated a loss. However, they received a great benefit instead.
Are you ready to resolve the “real” issues that cause you to self medicate with food?
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 7:22:29 PM | 8 COMMENTS
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2010
"Checking Out" in Advance
Just the other day I heard a patient describe something about emotional eating that I had not noticed before. She said that she found herself "checking out" for the last several weeks, which meant she was binging in anticipation of a stressful event that was to take place soon.
Checking out meant to her that she was no longer pausing and thinking. She didn’t want to even try to understand what her emotional hunger was all about. Usually she “checks in” with herself, is on top of what is going on, and quite able to limit and control her binge eating.
Most of the time I hear patients describe eating episodes that happen AFTER something has upset or frustrated them or caused them to question themselves in a critical way. However, this time, my patient was having eating issues BEFORE the event occurred. It’s as if she predicted that there was going to be a situation she couldn’t avoid, that would make her feel so helpless and powerless that she would not be able to cope with it unless she comforted herself with food weeks in advance.
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The anticipated event was a meeting she set up with her boss as a favor for two former classmates from a small town in the Midwest. She needed nothing from them. They were old friends of the family about her same age. When I asked her what was so disturbing about the anticipated visit that required her to eat in excess in order to cope with it, she said she imagined them coming into the office and looking at her and thinking what a loser she was for being overweight, even though her office and her position reflected her success in the world. She was ashamed of herself, and predicted that the shame she felt would come back at her in the form of their critical judgement.
She said she does this frequently. There’s a cycle in her life. There are normal times, then there are these periods in which she just hunkers down in anticipation of a painful assault, eats her way through it, and then can go back to feeling normal and “checking in” again. During this “checking out” phase, when she binges-in-anticipation, she imagines that food and fat is a protective layer, a kind of psychic insulation that will soften the impact and the hurt of the attack she predicts is going to happen. Of course, nothing like what she anticipated actually happened. Her boss loved the meeting he had with them, everyone was cordial and her friends were quite appreciative, warm and friendly.
It's the anticipation of the unavoidable blow and the use of food and fat as a form of insulation and padding, that we need to pay more attention to here. The contrast between what she imagined would happen and what actually happened is stark. In order to help her hold on to this awareness I labeled her two realities as REALITY ONE and REALITY TWO.
REALITY ONE is what she could reasonably expect from what she knows about life and experience to happen, which is exactly what did happen. REALITY TWO is what we call in the Shrink Yourself Program, a “catastrophe prediction.” When she checked out and binged for two weeks, to give herself imaginary padding and protection, she actually believed that REALITY TWO was the accurate version.
However, her behavior showed me that she was confused and wasn't sure whether REALITY ONE or REALITY TWO was the real truth... so she responded to both of them. She over ate for comfort when REALITY TWO, her fear, was the controlling factor. But she didn’t cancel the meeting because she also believed in REALITY ONE, that it was going to be a successful event. If she had “checked in,” she would have struggled long enough to diminish or eliminate the impact of her erroneous prediction and she would not have had to gain the 7 pounds that she did in anticipation of a catastrophe that didn't occur.
In the same session she told me that she asked for a raise. She is highly valued, has a critical position, and has been a long-term and loyal employee. She was anticipating, in her catastrophic thinking imagination, that the personnel director would wave a finger in her face and tell her what a greedy person she was for wanting a raise. But in fact, she got the raise she wanted with no difficulty. However, when she told her mother of her triumph over the phone, her mother said; "isn't that being greedy?"
When we put those two stories together we see the common theme clearer. The imaginary catastrophe prediction, REALITY TWO, is based on a critical internal voice where the self-doubts of the past continue to reside. Imagining this kind of personal catastrophe is nothing more than the projection of one's self-doubts and self accusations onto the world screen as something that is about to happen out there, when in fact it is happening inside of you.
Once more, we can trace the act of binging and overeating back to self-doubts and self-criticism. When you apply the pause technique, the feelings you acknowledge are the beginning of a pathway that will almost always lead down to that unfinished business, that lack of confidence and uncertainty about one's worth and goodness that plagues so many people who are struggling with the habit of emotional eating.
What “catastrophe” are you predicting will happen if you loose your protective layer?
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 2:03:32 PM | 18 COMMENTS
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 22, 2010
Riding 100 Miles Uphill
This is the story of a patient who has been struggling with weight issues since her early teens. One day she told me about how she had just completed a 100 mile bike ride for a charity organization. She was proud of her achievement because this ride was on a grueling course, up four hills, each of which had an 8 mile incline. The story itself made me exhausted. I marveled at her strength, endurance and ability to stick to it. She is a married woman in her mid-50s and had only taken up biking later in life as a way to get the exercise she needed to complement her chronic dieting efforts.
She then went on to tell me that her riding partner, a professional trainer who works out seven days a week, was riding faster and stronger than she was. She said “I guess I’m not so strong after all” and looked a bit deflated. I was immediately taken aback. The bike ride was a great victory for her, and in two minutes she took it away from herself.
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The emotional mind has a way of thinking in the negative, the kind of thinking we endeavor to clarify and change in the Shrink Yourself Program. If the emotional thinking is not revisited and corrected, then the conclusion sticks... ”I am not so good” and the achievement is nullified. Her self image stays weak, and the achievement that enhances her self image disappears.
I took her up on her obvious thinking error. Unless she was number one she was essentially nothing. She wasn’t satisfied to be in the 99.9% percentile of women her age who are capable of riding 100 miles uphill. That meant nothing. She was applying one of the thinking errors that we demonstrate repeatedly in the program. The all or none thinking error. This is one of the major emotional thinking errors that perpetuate the self doubts and self criticism that plagues almost all emotional eaters.
We both understood the history involved. During high school she felt that she was fat and rejected by most of the other girls who were thin, including her older sister. She was teased and put down. Now she was working hard to be in shape and was proud of her achievements in her workout group. When one of the members said that she looked like she was being too aggressive and competitive in trying to be better than the rest of them, she had her wits about her to say “no, I am doing this for myself because it is my turn to be in good shape.” However, secretly she thought to herself, it feels good to be better than somebody. Nothing wrong with enjoying a small victory.
She defended and endorsed that particular achievement, but when she reversed her big 100 mile uphill bike ride victory, by slipping into the all or none thinking error, she put herself right back in high school again. This happened inside of her mind quickly, like a reflex. Unfortunately, the bad feelings and self doubts from the past are perpetuated in the present, as if they are still true.
That is an example of how the past history perpetuates itself inside our current life. That is how self doubts and sore sensitive spots from the past continue to be the kind of emotional pain that drives us to over use food for comfort. I believe that the major source of pain that drives emotional eating is not simply the frustrations of our current life, but the amplification of those frustrations by the pains of the past still hanging around inside.
This is a key issue. Past experiences cannot be eradicated from your brain. They have occurred and they are recorded. But you can do something to modify that recording. You can sort out the difference between the memory experience, even if it was painful, and the current reality. Her current reality demonstrates that she should be very proud of all the effort she has put in to stay in shape. She does not have a body that people can make fun of, she is strong, and she now enjoys her physical strength. She is the only one who can take that success away from herself and return to being the victim of her self doubts.
This is why we push the PAUSE and THINK exercise so strongly inside the program. You have to catch yourself doing this to yourself. And you have to catch yourself many times before you can master the distinction between a memory experience, and the reality of a particular situation. Over eating and binging interrupts your clear thinking and keeps you from making this crucial distinction and therefore keeps you stuck in those parts of your past you no longer want to inhabit.
What have you accomplished lately but have denied yourself the success you deserve?
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 2:38:53 PM | 12 COMMENTS
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 15, 2010
Why Most Diets Fail
Did you know that diets fail over 95% of the time! Studies show that in fact, after a short term success, people regain all the weight lost plus an additional ten percent. Sounds like most diets are predictable formulas for gaining excess weight rather than losing it.
Some people think that diets fail because they just are not the right diet. Other people think that diets fail because they are just too hard to follow. While others think they fail because the initial motivation to diet wears thin very quickly. And still some others think that it has nothing to do with the dieter, but with the culture that constantly teases us with so many delicious foods to eat, so many celebrations to attend, and so much peer pressure to snack with your compatriots at the office. All of these are correct and contribute to the problem, but they miss the main point, the elephant in the room, emotional eating.
From my own clinical experience and having treated thousands of people online for emotional eating, I am totally convinced that there is ONE major reason that diets fail, and that is due to emotional eating. Diets fail because there are times in life when having food for a reward or food as a means of distraction or food as a way to control painful feelings, is much too immediate and seems much more important than the long range outcomes of healthy eating. Everyone is an emotional eater to some degree.
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Emotional eating is the centerpiece of every family, every day. From infancy on food is used not just as nutrition but in celebrations, as reward, for pleasure and as a marker of love, affection and nurturing. Food becomes especially important in those households where the real kind of affection, understanding, and nurturing is in short supply. Then food becomes love, a poor substitute for real love, and therefore there is never enough to fill up on. To the degree that every child looks for unconditional love and every adult, no matter how mature, would still like the same, food can easily become a more reliable substitute than even a beloved pet.
With that in mind, think about what it means to go on a diet. It doesn't mean to go without food because being on a diet does not mean starving yourself. What you are deprived of when you go on a diet is the relationship with food that acts as a substitute form of love, affection, acknowledgment and whatever other nurturing you are seeking, wanting and needing. Diets fail because human beings cannot hold out too long when they are hungry for love and some form of love is nearby, even when that form is unhealthy, like junk food or a bad relationship.
Emotional eating is the cause of being overweight and the cause of diet failure. It will always be the cause of diet failure until this psychological understanding is made conscious to you, and you incorporate your insights into your weight loss effort. That’s why I wrote the Shrink Yourself book and created the interactive online program.
There are two other factors to consider which are particularly important if the weight problem started before adulthood, but also apply to those who began to have weight problems later in life.
Overweight teenagers enter adulthood with a bad body self-image and an expectation of rejection and disappointment with the opposite sex. They feel incompetent in this area of life because they missed many of the ”training“ opportunities during the critical teenage years of social/sexual development. As adults, a successful weight loss experience tempts them to explore potential new relationships or new levels of intimacy with their current partners. The lingering fears and doubts about their bodies and their relationship skills lead them to expect rejection and disappointment, or to be overly sensitive to ordinary and expected rejections, slights, and disappointments. Returning to the “safety“ of layers of fat as insulation and protection is so tempting that they begin to over-eat or binge, break their diet, and give up.
It's as if they have lingered too close to dangerous territory of remembered, and therefore expected, rejection and disappointment. They are afraid to go one more step forward, and instead retreat. This is a shame, because with some insight and with only minor risks, they would be able to repair their self-image and quickly learn the skills that they did not master earlier in life.
The second issue is also a self-image issue. When a young person has been told to diet by a parent, they are being told, just by the fact of having to diet and being marked as being overweight, that something is wrong with them. This creates the self-image of a voracious person with an out-of-control appetite who cannot trust him or herself to manage their own appetite. If this is who you “really” are, then you must have some external monitor watching you and meting out either punishment or praise. Of course you resent this judgmental authority who is trying to control you. So you swing back and forth between compliance and defiance, going up and down in your weight.
If you fast-forward 20 or 30 years and watch that once young person who is now an adult go on a diet you will see the power struggle with the parent being played out on themselves. In our program almost every member can tell you about their continuing rebellious self that is defiant and does not want ANYONE telling them what to eat, when to eat or how much to eat.
That someone else “telling them what to do” includes themselves. That’s why they go on a diet. When you go on a diet as an adult you decide to submit temporarily to an external authority, which is essentially a substitute for the parent who watched over you because you had an out of control voracious appetite. You submit to the diet the same way you submitted temporarily to the parent until you cannot stand the loss of your beloved emotional eating. And then you defy authority to get at least a substitute form of love along with a false sense of being in control while being out of control. Every person who I have talked to who has been an overweight child has told me the most incredible stories of their ongoing secret methods of defiance. They did everything they could to fool the parent into thinking they were complying while at the same time they were able to sneak food.
This is an essential game in the life of an overweight child that creates an inevitable trap for them as an adult. The game goes on in adulthood but no longer between a parent and a child. Instead it is played out within oneself as if there were two people inside the same skin, one compliant and the other rebellious.
When I pointed this out to a patient recently and told her that she did not have to diet to lose weight but could eat whatever she wants as long as she eats in a conscious, healthy way, she teared up and trembled with fear. She told me that she could not trust herself. We explored this some more and she told me point blank "I am terrified of the idea that I am the one who controls what I eat."
This patient was more addicted to dieting than she was addicted to food. When she diets she can decide to comply or rebel depending on her mood. When she takes responsibility for what she eats, the game is over, and she has to admit that she is an adult person who has health reasons for losing weight and that it is in her best interest to do so. And that SHE is the only one who decides how to conduct her life, preserve her health and has the ability to prevent further damage. Being the one who is responsible is seen as a burden, when in fact it is the indisputable reality of life, a given, that is to neither be rejected or accepted, but just is.
How many diets have you been on?
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 3:57:06 PM | 10 COMMENTS
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 08, 2010
When the Past is in Conflict with the Present
The blog comments from last week clearly illustrate how the past continues to influence our current life, and in particular how past events directly relate to emotional eating patterns. Now that we have established this fact, the question that is uppermost in every one's mind is what can one possibly do about it. As the members of the Shrink Yourself Program know very well, there is much that can be done about it. Let's look at a few examples that demonstrate how you can think instead of eat, and stop old patterns that began in childhood but no longer make sense to continue. Here is what Jane said;
When I was a child I had open heart surgery at the age of 6 weeks and again at the age of 7 years. All the examinations and procedures and long spells in hospital must have played a part in my insecurity. I was always rewarded with food at visiting times, and when I came home from hospital. Even the night before the major heart surgery at the age of 7 I was able to choose the meal I wanted. The cheese and onion pastry combination is still my favourite comfort food. I now weigh almost 20 stone. I am trying hard to lose weight. A continuous struggle.
The childhood connection is obvious. Food made her feel safe when she felt in the most danger. But why does she continue to use food for safety now? If she can stop to think about her current reality, she will be able to see that food does not make her safe. It only makes her feel safe. It only gives her the illusion of safety. The illusion of safety is powerful and at times very desirable. But does it serve Jane as an adult? She probably has not thought about this connection between food and safety until now. It had become an automatic part of the way she reacts.
In the Shrink Yourself Program we would ask Jane to pause and reexamine her reasons for over eating. She would undoubtedly discover -- consciously acknowledge -- that which she has already said in passing, that she is eating to feel safe. During the third month of the program we would help her examine this “safety net” until her mature adult thinking mind figured out that it is only an illusion. This process would free her from continuing an old blind habit that is making her miserable.
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The key to changing the patterns from the past, is to recognize that they are in conflict with the realities of the present. We ask you to pause long enough to think about that. Once that thought is implanted in your mind, it will work into your unconscious, and eventually current reality will win and whichever old illusion is powering your emotional eating will dissolve for good.
We have received several comments about childhood sexual abuse and the relationship between that and eating. Here is one that shows the connection between sexual experience, shame, and food. Gloria said;
Thank you for sharing your comments--they helped me remember a childhood of repeated sexual abuse by a family member. Always-- the abuse began with the enticement of a favorite food and ended with the reward of some more. The entire scenario became more and more intense and intolerable--not knowing how to help myself--I prayed to die. By Divine intervention my prayers were answered by my abuser's death. For many years I have struggled with eating binges. Hope-fully, now I may begin to understand myself, forgive myself, and begin to heal myself.
When Gloria starts to think about this in a very realistic way she will ask herself the question "What is it that I have to forgive myself for? What crime did I actually commit? She may go through a similar process as Uni did;
One summer when I was 8, my 2nd cousin who was 18 offered to babysit my brother and I.. When were were alone he gave me the big schmooze about how special I was and this was our little secret and how everyone would be mad and jealous if they found out how much he loved me and this is how you show special people love... And I didn't have a clue what he was doing but it felt good. So the next time he came to babysit I eagerly went. That is my shame. It was later, when I was older, when I learned about the birds and bees from a friend's older sister because my parents didn't talk about such things when I realized what had happened and that I had wanted it and that it was my fault and I was bad deep inside.
So here is the situation. A vulnerable child was seduced and ended up feeling guilty and responsible because “it felt good.” She held that burden for decades, did not re-examine it, and eats to cover it up as if some judge had pronounced her bad and guilty. This is her secret, and this is what makes her overeat. Not for reward or pleasure, but to combat the memory and the false sentence imposed upon her. This is what she has to review in order to be free. There is no other way. If she does not do the thinking and examining work, she will remain a double victim. A victim of her abuser and the victimization she imposed upon herself by a very understandable misunderstanding. There is a natural healing process at work that has to do with our life cycle, as illustrated by what Uni said next;
It wasn't until my mid 30's, when my daughter turned 8, that I was able to see just how young that was and stop blaming myself. Today I'm turning 42 and that cousin lives next door. When he moved in three years ago that forced me to deal with it rather than push it away. I still have safety/powerlessness issues but am being far nicer to myself now in terms of being less critical and feeling more worthy.
It is a blessing of nature that time and maturity help us understand our childhood truth, however there are tools to help us recover faster and sooner, if we seek them out. Unfortunately there are many other people out there who do not realize that they have put a past abuse out of their mind, but are still haunted by it when stimulated by some set of present circumstances? SwingGal said;
Your blog post here is very timely. I just finished reading a popular novel that deals with intense sexual abuse in a very graphic manner. I did not know this when I started reading and it unexpectedly triggered emotions that I thought I had dealt with from being molested as a child. I noticed that my first reaction when I finished the book was to eat and turn to my husband. The only people who are now alive that know of the abuse, are the abuser, my husband who came along much later of course and me. My mother knew of it but is now gone. It has led to a lot of hopeless feelings this week. Thank you for your insight.
Early sexual abuse is a horrible crime against children. Children are never at fault, they are always the victims. Eating disorders are common ways to deal with the intensity of this type of emotional pain. As an adult, healing from abuse requires empowering yourself. If you continue to use emotional eating to cope with your childhood pain, you will remain stuck in the past and not be able to free yourself from the false illusion that you are still powerless.
However, if you are willing to pause and begin to re-examine that childhood injury, you can re-frame it with adult thinking that will set you free. Pausing to ponder before eating, is not just a simple, superficial maneuver. It is a moment, a space, where you can find the doorway and the courage to face the past with an eye to the future. And as you think through the Pause Technique with your adult mind, you will step through that door into the life you truly deserve.
What is waiting for you on the other side of the door?
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 3:57:59 PM | 6 COMMENTS
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 01, 2010
Emotional Hunger Points to the Past
In this week’s blog post we will take a look at how childhood powerlessness relates to emotional hunger in adulthood. I invite you to become conscious of the powerlessness you felt in the past and use it to transform those feelings of helplessness into the skills of a problem-solving thinker.
When you read stories of other people describing the “emotional hunger’’ that drives their emotional eating, the first hand descriptions make this concept come alive. They will resonate with part of your own life, no matter who you are.
Why this is true? It’s certainly not because we are all the same, since we are all so obviously different. I believe its because we all struggle with the same issue; how to live our lives as an adult, the way we truly wish to, rather than how we have been unconsciously formed to generate certain responses by our childhood experiences.
The one subject I hear about over and over again from my patients, from the members on the site and from those who comment on the blogs regarding their struggle with emotional eating is the issue of abuse in childhood. Of course there are many kinds of abuse, and many degrees of abuse. Individuals may have been subject in childhood to verbal abuse, physical abuse, abandonment, or neglect and this is not an inclusive list. Furthermore, all of the childhood experiences that are connected to emotional eating are not caused by abuse, but the abuse experience has clear cut consequences that will help us understand the connection between feeling powerless and emotional eating in all cases.
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The one thing all forms of abuse have in common is the effect on self worth. No matter what kind of abuse is suffered, the child ends up feeling less worthy, and less entitled to a good and full life. When a parent attacks you as a child, it is an attack that comes from a position of authority, from the one who is all knowing and can see right through you to the core. Because this authority is unquestionable, if you are attacked, you must deserve the attack because of something you did or didn’t do, or didn’t do well enough. It that moment, it was uncontested that it was you, not the parent or any other person or thing who was wrong or inadequate. This harsh and unyielding judgement, which is taken on as the truth by the child, is the common legacy of such abuse. The child is completely powerless to confront this false construction of worth.
One comment of a woman describing her emotional hunger last week illustrates so well the lasting effect of childhood abuse.
“Another need is to protect myself from my dad! He was emotionally abusive for many years and reading through your book the other day, I realised that my emotional eating was to protect myself from him! Even though he died 3 months ago!!! The thoughts of what he did and said play in my mind every day and I cant let go of them. This in turn has impacted on my marriage and we are not happy. I feel powerless to do anything about it all. After all if I cannot get dad’s abuse out of my head, how can I change anything?”
There it is. Powerlessness is what drives emotional eating. This woman feels powerless to satisfy her emotional hunger to be accepted, loved and treated kindly. This basic right of every child was denied to her, and it feels like she is not getting it as an adult either. In fact, she may not be getting her legitimate emotional hunger met by her husband because it is so hard for her to distinguish what her husband does or does not do from the voice of her father that is still so loud. Her husband may be ready and able to give her what she needs, if she can get rid of the barriers within her that won’t allow love inside.
This same woman added the following; “I think the needs my emotional hunger is pointing to are: Feeling bored - I procrastinate all the time for fear of failing or making mistakes. I have loads of ideas in my head that I never do anything about because of this. Learning French and doing some craft projects are just two of them.”
When you are verbally abused and criticized as a child you grow up afraid to make mistakes. You learn how to shut down or play it safe in order to avoid the anticipated assault before you can do or grow in ways that satisfy you. This invisible obstacle, the memory of these past assaults, keeps you frustrated and has you feeling powerless and emotionally hungry in response to many, if not most desires to be your authentic self. Believing that you have no power to change these feelings, or to make different choices for your life, you choose food for comfort.
This is how it works... The woman above started the program observing that she overeats when she is bored. She looks for an alternative to this behavior, and thinks of all the things she would like to do. Then she discovers an obstacle. She is afraid to make mistakes. And then she discovers the source of that fear, which is the abusive voice of her father that still threatens and controls her from within her own mind.
Right now, this is where she is. This is as far as she has gotten. The source of her powerlessness, the voice of her dead father, is defeating her. She does not yet imagine that she can do anything about it. But she can. And as she goes further into the program, she will finally be able to make and act on the right choices for her growth into who she really is and what she really can do to make her life a rich and full one.
Here a member, further on in the program, shares what is possible:
“I too lived through verbal abuse as a child and young adult. 30 years later I remember word for word the comments. I don't think it possible to forget, but it is important to put it all into perspective, ie... it's over...At least that's how I'm trying to deal with it. My current life is wonderful. My husband is my best friend and a rock to me. I don't have a great job, but it's ok.... I'm grateful to have a job in this economy. The past comes back from time to time and I analyse it to death, then put it away again-feeling like I'm wasting time thinking about it-which is true for me... so... know that it's there, but it doesn't have any power of you, you have the power to move beyond it and focus on the here and now. Don't avoid it, but don't encourage it to continue to rule your life. Live in the now is my new mantra. Good luck and God Bless You...I have the Shrink Yourself book and have learned and continue to learn a lot about my approach to life. I'm hopeful that this journey will lead me to good health and true happiness. Thank you Dr. Gould. I was scared to take the plunge, but after beginning, I feel the need to go on and I discover my inner power and use it to the fullest.”
Another member added this comment to the blog:
“I think my emotional hunger masks my need for achievement and success. Binge eating provides an out so that I can justify my failure. I think emotional eating also means that I can avoid confronting my overwhelming feelings of worthlessness and inadequacy.”
Failure, worthlessness and inadequacy. Those are the stigma that are carried from childhood into adulthood. Do we need achievement to compensate for our internal sense of failure? If so, it will never be enough, because when you compensate for poor self esteem you are doing so because you believe you are worthless. You can cover it up, explain with binges, but you don’t question it. If you don’t question it, then the “truth” from childhood remains your truth in adulthood. Eating only covers it up. Eating actually interrupts the dialogue this member is already having with overwhelming feelings of worthlessness and inadequacy.
If one believes in having been given a life sentence to these feelings by the treatment and messages received in childhood, it becomes an immutable destiny, and you will remain powerless. Eating without hope of a better life will only reinforce the negative image of childhood, and you won’t be able to do the work to free yourself from this childhood legacy.
But what if, instead of avoiding these feelings, you confront them with the mindset of a problem-solving, mature thinking adult? Once you are committed to putting childhood’s traumas into the life cycle perspective in order to reclaim your adulthood, every experience becomes a part of the healing process.
This person reports on a disastrous family gathering, during which a conscious effort was made to face real feelings; “... I was also way more aware of the emptiness and the abandonment issues plus the anger that went along with them. I am looking on it as a very positive step. In a weird way I'm glad the family shit surfaced again because this time I have received huge blessings from it. I am closer to my internal and external reality being in sync than I think I have ever been.”
What does it mean to recover from childhood damage? While I have used abuse as an extreme example, the process is the same. To recover from your childhood, you come to terms with the fact that you can’t change the past. But you absolutely can change the effect of the past on your current life, as long you understand and accept that there is no magic formula for recovering from the traumas of the past. It is a process that has to keep moving forward, inch by inch. It can be done, but you need to be emotionally present to do it. To be present means you can’t use the food trance to avoid your feelings. I can assure you though, that even in the face of traumatic abuse, where recovery can be complicated by difficulty, it is possible to heal and grow and be happy without resorting to emotional eating.
What childhood event do you need to “re-think” with an adult perspective?
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 10:54:23 PM | 19 COMMENTS
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2010
The Thinking Person's Diet
Emotional eating is a very effective way to block or avoid feelings, but an unhealthy and unproductive way of dealing with the emotional hunger that those feelings represent.
You don’t ask to feel happy or sad or bored or angry, you just feel that way and then have to figure out what to do with those feelings. In an instant you can decide to let them in or ignore them. Do you let them become the beginning of a thought train or do you distract yourself to avoid the thinking process that would otherwise naturally occur?
It took me a whole book to explore this subject fully. Here is a much shorter and more easily accessible look at what happens when the moments of strong cravings and extreme hunger tempt you to binge or overeat. If you can capture the feelings that create those cravings when they come to the surface for however brief an instant, you will begin to experience a thinking person’s diet.
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Feelings point to our needs and desires. Happy feelings occur when you feel satisfied or believe that you are going to be satisfied. Negative feelings happen when you are frustrated because a need or desire is not being satisfied or is not going to be satisfied. It’s the negative feelings that we tend to block with food. We fool ourselves into thinking that the comfort of food is a solution to the pain of our negative feelings.
But those feelings that we block with food are exactly the ones we need to examine most closely. Only when we become aware of our negative feelings can we begin to take corrective actions. Blunting or blocking the negative feelings means you are avoiding dealing with your own very real and very important needs, and that means you stay stuck and frustrated.
Why do we do this? Because we believe we are powerless and better off not knowing how deeply we are bothered. Why know about your pain if you can’t do anything about it? However, what if you are wrong? What if you are not powerless?
I have been treating people with this problem for over a decade and I can tell you that every patient I treat starts out believing they are powerless to satisfy their most important needs, or resolve their most troubling problems. However, every single one has discovered that they are not powerless at all. They were just not using their problem solving mind. And it was by pausing that they began to let that mind do its job.
One of our members wrote this the other day. She started out being afraid to feel or follow her feelings, and here is what she said;
The pause technique has been so useful to me. At first I identified the feeling of boredom as the reason I was reaching for food. As time went by and I continued to dig deeper I realized there was some anger and resentment there too sometimes. Now I am even getting further and finding a lot of longing - for affection, contact, understanding and love. I've realized it is not scary to feel these emotions. It is actually wonderful to feel.
Think of what this tells us. The feeling she felt she needed to bury with emotional eating were the very source of her power. It wasn’t until she let herself feel her boredom that she realized it was not a lethal disease. She found solution to her boredom. It made her more confident. Then she used this confidence to look at her resentments, and found things she could do about those feelings too. The more she felt, the more she found resources to deal with and fulfill the needs that surfaced. Feelings fully felt, no matter how difficult, are a path to empowerment, not an exercise in frustration. She has reclaimed the fullness of her feeling and she now knows how wonderful it is.
When you use food to shut out your feelings, you stop thinking about what is bothering you. Then you don’t satisfy your emotional needs, you just bury them. The buried emotional hunger turns into cravings that drive you to overeat, in order to satisfy your very real need for love or understanding or acceptance.
Food never satisfies these needs. It’s a poor substitute for love or acceptance. It doesn’t work for very long because when the anesthetic- avoidance effect of overeating wears off, the emotional hunger is still there because the need is still there. And the unsatisfied needs are heavy to carry because they are laden with the false pessimism of defeat and powerlessness.
When you block your feelings with food, you shut off the most mature part of your mind, the part of your mind that is capable of thinking, understanding, and getting perspective. You need to fully engage your problem solving mind in order to figure out how you are going to handle the pain of frustration. If you don’t do that, you remain stuck in a statement of chronic low level depression.
It’s important to embrace your feelings long enough to start thinking about what they mean, where they are leading, and always remember that you have a mature problem solving mind that can deal with your frustrations effectively and usefully. Don’t shut your mind off, turn it on. Consider the Shrink Yourself Program as a coach to help you think yourself into a healthy relationship with food.
What need to you think your emotional hunger is pointing to?
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 8:26:27 PM | 11 COMMENTS
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 2010
Count to 10
Do you remember when you were told to count to 10 when you got angry as a child? Why did your parents or teachers want you to do that? The reason was to give you time to calm down and think more before reacting to your strong feelings and urges.
When you feel instantly and automatically angry, you are certain that you are right and the other person is wrong or that an injustice has been done to you and you need to do something. However, in this initial state, you are very likely to act out inappropriately.
When you count to 10 you give yourself time to think... “Maybe I did something to provoke this, or maybe it’s a misunderstanding, or maybe this is really a small issue, or maybe I’m just in a bad mood and it hit me the wrong way and I’m overreacting.”
At the end of counting to 10 you will have done this analysis with your intelligent mind rather than reacting on your initial emotional impulse. That short PAUSE is long enough for you to shape a more thoughtful response. You might still believe that injustice was done and you are right, but you will be able to handle the situation more effectively.
It is important to make the distinction between immature thinking and mature thinking here. We call the initial automatic response an “immature” way of thinking. And we call the thoughtful response (after the count of 10) as the “mature” way of thinking. Is there any question about which way of thinking is the best way to conduct your life?
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This is why we focus first on the PAUSE technique inside the Shrink Yourself Program. If you don’t “Pause and Think,” it will be next to impossible to get control of your eating habits. And if you don’t engage your mature thinking process, your life will continue to feel out of control and you will continue to use food as a form of medication.
This is another way of looking at what I talked about in last week’s blog. If you are running away from your feelings by eating, you are not pausing long enough to engage your own mature thinking processes. And that means that your immature thinking will continue to haunt you and keep your best potential hidden away.
Here’s how a Shrink Yourself Member put her insights into words:
“Every time I am successful at awareness of, and stopping compulsive eating it builds up my self esteem and makes me stronger for the next time it comes up. I have had so many great insights from the program! And I know it is all up to me. I can feel my feelings and I can face reality, that is what it is to be an adult. I now feel like I am living as a mature adult. Before dealing with my food issues, I felt good in other areas of life but this food issue kept me confused and feeling powerless. Now I know I can control it. I know I can look at it realistically and find real solutions to my uncomfortable feelings or just feel the feelings. The food never helped anyway! The eating just prolonged my suffering and then added to it by making food another issue to feel bad about.”
I encounter these issues every day in my practice. Here is another example of immature thinking. A women came to see me after spending several months at a spa to lose 50 pounds. She had already gained back 15 pounds and was worried she would end up where she started.
She said... “When I go to a restaurant, even if I am alone, I don’t want anyone to tell me what to eat. So I rebel and eat too much. What am I supposed to do when I feel like rebelling?”
I said to her let’s pause right now and think about this. There is actually no one there to rebel against. Both of your parents are deceased and you are alone. So who are you really talking to? We know that you desperately want to lose weight because of your aches and pains, however we also discussed several reasons why you are afraid of succeeding.
If you think about it you are not rebelling at all. That’s an “immature” way of looking at this. You actually have a real conflict to resolve. The “mature” perspective is to recognize that you have not yet decided that either you are worthy of success or can deal with the consequences of success. Now you can think further about your conflict and decide for yourself, whether it is really risky to succeed in having control over your weight or if it is just a phantom danger.
Were are all guilty of some immature thinking from time to time. However, if you have become a victim of the emotional eating habit to automatically run away from feelings, then your immature thinking will be in control of your decisions and your life. This is what you want to change. You want to feed and nurture your intelligent adult mind rather than pacify your childhood triggers.
You may be feeling that food controls you now, however once you learn and practice the difference between immature and mature thinking you will be in control of all aspects of your life.
This is what the Shrink Yourself Program will help YOU do for yourself. The side effects of doing this personal growth are ending emotional eating, losing weight and letting your Best Self shine through.
What old outdated immature thoughts are you ready to let go of?
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 7:39:38 PM | 10 COMMENTS
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2010
Run, Run, Runaway
Are you a Runaway? If you are a binge eater or a compulsive over eater you are a Runaway. That’s because when you eat that way, you are actually running away from yourself. When kids run away from home, it's because they feel misunderstood or under appreciated or abused. Everyone has felt unloved some time in their childhood, but the Runaway not only feels that sometimes, he or she comes to feel that way all the time. He or she feels it so deeply that it becomes the unquestioned and immutable truth and there's nothing that can be done about it except to run away. The Runaway experiences great pain and a sense of helplessness.
As I continue to work with patients who are fighting the food obsession, I find myself always encouraging them to use the pause technique and simply ask themselves what they are running away from when they reach for food in a compulsive manner. I can ask that question safely because I know that they don’t need to run away from their feelings anymore. Although the feelings are painful, you are no longer a helpless child.
The answers to the question, “what are you feeling?” vary in accordance with where you are in the treatment process. It usually starts out as "I don't know. I just feel this overwhelming hungry feeling even though I just ate and I am full." I encourage that person to experiment more, knowing that soon it will become clear to them. If they are sitting in the room with me, I might make a comment on the emotion that shows on their face because their body almost always betrays their feeling. Your brain knows what you are feeling, even if you can’t put it into words yet. When I commented on one patients facial flush she was able to tell me she was running away from sadness, only after she found her face wet with tears.
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Feelings are the way you, your brain, and your body communicate about what is going on in your life and what is important to you. If you are sad about something, knowing it clearly helps you either get through it and over it (if it is beyond your control) or helps you figure out what else you can do, including preventing something that has not happened yet.
After several tries, the only feeling another patient could identify was deprivation, even though she lives a full life. She had to snack late in the afternoon and eat before she went to bed or she would feel deprived. That was something I could work with because feeling deprived has two root causes. You may be legitimately and biologically hungry because you have not eaten enough, and feeling deprived is your body’s signal to get something to eat. But you may also be feeling deprived of love, or contact, or opportunity, or understanding, or any of the other psychological “foods” that we all need to feel full and flourish. The fact is we can be “emotionally hungry” because of some legitimate psychological need. In either case, there is a real and legitimate need operating in the background, and feeling deprived is the signal your body gives to alert you, so you can start thinking about what you are going to do to get that need satisfied. But first you have to separate out the two kinds of deprivation. If you don’t, you might be feeding yourself cake and ice cream when in fact you should be making a telephone call.
When I asked my patient if she could fast for twelve hours to prepare for a blood glucose test, she answered that she had done that several times in her life. So I asked if her feelings or hunger were unbearable then? No, she answered, she didn’t feel deprived even though she was hungry. Then you can handle the deprivation of food, can't you?, I said. Her eyes lit up because she hadn't thought about it that way before. She was now in her sixth decade and she has been automatically eating when feeling deprived (emotionally hungry) since she was eight years old without ever thinking about it. Putting that feeling into words, despite the many years of therapy she had before I saw her, made the difference between food hunger and emotional hunger quite real. Now she has something she can work with and think about.
As we continued to talk she described a rather awful childhood that included an unbelievable amount of deprivation, but not of food. She was deprived of love, understanding, and basic acceptance. The connection became apparent. That’s when she learned how to run away from the terrible feelings into food. Now, as an adult, she continues the pattern. When during the course of her day or night she feels under appreciated or improperly loved, she feels deeply deprived and instead of doing something about it, she eats.
Although feeling deprived is a normal response to what is happening in her life, the intensity of feeling deprived is not. The level of intensity is a response to the memory of her childhood life. As long as she ate compulsively and automatically to just the whiff of feeling deprived, she couldn’t make the distinction between the normal adult feelings of deprivation (which she can handle) and the horrible memories of her childhood which never got processed and put to rest. It’s as if the original painful memories were put into a mental storage container which leaked at times and had to be resealed by compulsive eating. The leaks occurred when real adult deprivation occurred. Those few moments of psychotherapy opened the door to a stunning piece of self-analysis by this patient, and a remarkable outcome.
I cannot emphasize too much how important it is to master the pause technique, which we focus on and help you practice during the first month of the Shrink Yourself program. When you pause, you open up to your feelings, the very same feelings that you usually run away from. It's like opening a door into those parts of your life that you need to explore in order to master your anxiety and tension. When you open the door, you can use the best part of your mind to deal with what is important to you now. If you don’t open the door, you will continue to use food to run away from the best part of yourself.
This is the first insight that must be mastered in order to be cured of compulsive eating and the food obsession. The feelings you are running away from will not hurt you, they will help you rediscover yourself. They will lead you to the right challenges that you can manage or solve, and then you will feel powerful again. This is what we help you do in the second month of the Shrink Yourself program. Once that is accomplished, you’ll be able to get the greatest benefit of all... you will learn that you can recover from your childhood no matter how difficult it may have been.
When you overeat, what feelings are you running away from?
And are you ready to stop running?
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 6:42:36 PM | 12 COMMENTS
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 03, 2010
Fathers, Mothers, Sisters and Brothers
Last week I wrote about two sisters. This week I want to include the whole family. You may wonder what family dynamics has to do with being overweight? In a few cases nothing, but in most cases it is either the immediate trigger to binge eating or the prime source of the intense cravings that make it impossible to stick to a healthy diet.
Remember, the principle of emotional eating is that you over eat in order to hide from the painful emotions that point to unresolved problems. Your unresolved problems are probably not much different from the inevitable problems of daily life, relationships, work, and family that everyone faces. However, the emotional eater has learned how to easily, through food, run away from the disturbing emotions that would otherwise prompt them to solve these problems sooner.
When these problems don’t get resolved, more food is necessary to quiet the mind, and you lose sight of the original issues that need your attention. But you can’t trick your own mind for too long. The issues don’t go away and the problems and the burden accumulates. They sit inside the mind, and they weigh you down. That is why it is so easy to feel overloaded and about to explode. And when you become so afraid to know what you are really feeling, you automatically turn to food.
If you haven’t started the Shrink Yourself program yet, this may be all that you are aware of at this time. That you have to eat too much or binge, that you don’t understand why, and that you are afraid at some level. You may be hoping for the perfect diet or for more shear willpower to keep you on track. However, for those of you who are further along in the program, you have learned that looking inside is not so dangerous, but actually liberating, and it gives you a new sense of control in how you live your life. You have learned to work on problems, rather than avoid them, and therefore you carry a lighter load.
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This “thinking about emotions” and “feeling about thoughts” approach to how you eat and live your daily life opens you up to new insights about yourself. However, one of the hardest things to learn is how to deal with your family. And it is very easy to feel “powerless” when dealing with your family members. As you know from my previous blogs, it is the feelings of powerlessness or hopelessness that are transformed into unstoppable cravings.
Feeling “powerless” is what makes you fat. Learning that you are POWERFUL is what cures you of your food obsession or addiction. Let’s examine the issue of powerlessness when dealing with or thinking about your original family. You are an adult now, and may even have your own children or grandchildren. Whatever happened in the past is past history, and although it may hurt to remember certain things, it can’t mean the same as it did when you were a child, because you are not dependent on your family for survival as you were then.
As a young child, abandonment was your greatest fear because you didn’t know the ways of the world yet. Now, unless you are totally economically dependent on parents or family members, you can make your own way in the world. In childhood, there was real issues of powerlessness in relation to your family, or your family members. In adulthood, there is only the memory of feeling powerless. You have to remember this critical distinction in order to master any current frustration experience with your family.
You can start to stop feeling “powerless” by simply considering your options, because there are always options in dealing with family members. You can confront behavior you don’t like. You can have a quiet conversation about it. You can avoid certain topics. You can distance yourself. You can set boundaries. You can declare what you will do or you won’t do in response to what they are doing. You can let go and move on. You can give the relationship a time out. You can lower your expectations. You can change your behavior and see how they respond. You can ask for explanation of behavior you don’t understand. You can ask someone close to speak for you.
If one thing doesn’t work well, you can always try the next option.
In families that exercise their options, there is continuous growth for each member of the family and evolution of the family dynamics. However, if you actually believe that you are “powerless,” then this change and growth doesn’t happen. The same old relationship hurts, dramas and scars just keep going on and getting bigger, over and over again. So if you are an emotional eater, your experiences with your family will make you eat more because the repetition is so painful and it makes you feel even more hopeless.
You may also be keeping yourself “powerless” by waiting for someone to give it back to you. You may be looking for a sibling or a parent to tell you that you are now accepted, or lovable, or valuable, or worth caring about, or smart, or pretty, or competent. You may be trying all the old ways of being nice, thoughtful, caring, helpful and/or self sacrificing in order to finally get that approbation that you feel they are holding back from you. Or you may be holding yourself responsible for making it ALL work out just right.
In every relationship there is a play of power, a dance and a balance to be found. If you are waiting for approbation, then you are not using your power. In fact, you have given your power points away to the other person. And even if they (your mother, father, sister or brother) are not consciously trying to keep the power over you, very few people are mature enough to know how to give it back. You have to assert yourself in new and different ways to demonstrate that you have your own power, and that there are consequences if they continue to mistreat you.
One of my patients did this recently and to her surprise, a father who has been verbally abusive to her all of her life, wrote a note of apology. These things can happen, but not always. Such a perfect result is not to be expected, but a little movement in the right direction in response to you exercising your adult options will give you back all the power you need to move forward. The other person does not have to respond the way you want. You have to behave in a way that makes you proud of yourself. That’s real power.
If you are waiting for someone to release you from the bondage of your own self doubts, then none of the other options I described above will be available to you. You will continue to make yourself “powerless” by aiming for the outcome that has always been out of reach as a child, rather than dealing with the reality of who you are and who they are now as adults. In that way you hold onto your childhood fantasies of being cured by unconditional love, and violate your adulthood. You give away your power and make yourself feel powerless.
How does your family feed your sense of powerlessness?
And what can you do differently to take back your power?
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 7:45:03 PM | 5 COMMENTS
FRIDAY, AUGUST 27, 2010
THE TALE OF TWO SISTERS
As I work with people struggling with their weight, I continue to see patterns emerge that illustrate some very important points about the deeper parts of the emotional eating problem. Recently I saw two women who have been struggling with weight issues for decades, both of whom have a very difficult relationship with their sisters. And it is the “sister thing” that was "eating them both up” when we talked, and is quite central to their binge behavior and chronic weight problem.
Both women are married and both have very strong successful careers. Neither woman can stop binging when they are unhappy or distressed with their sisters. Both women tended to dwell in the past despite the fact that their present life is going quite well, albeit the normal stress bumps of every day life. In both cases, the emotional passion was much more intense when talking about their childhood grievances than about any real time problem in living.
The striking commonality on the surface is the conflict they have with their sisters, though each conflict is quite different. One feels overloaded by the responsibility of taking care of her older sister while the other feels exploited by her younger sister. Both relationships are enduring with absolutely no real danger of ending, and therein lies the deeper problem. They are both stuck and neither can figure out an easy solution to the thirty year problem of how to fashion a healthy, mutual, workable relationship with their respective sister.
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Unfortunately, the relationship with their siblings has not evolved. It has frozen in time. They both feel helpless to do anything about it, since in their own mind they've already tried everything. As we know, when you feel helpless and powerless, you have intense cravings and must over eat or binge. That is the direct link to their eating behavior. Not much more mystery than that.
They both feel helpless because they can not set boundaries or negotiate some fair exchange with their sisters for fear their sisters would be offended, hurt or not speak to them. They can not take the normal chances that one takes in any relationship, because they feel responsible for holding the family together. They were the sensitive, loving and kind ones in the family who didn’t want to hurt anybody, and were hoping not to be hurt if they continued to be endlessly kind. While this is an admirable quality and certainly consistent with the universal value of family loyalty, when carried to the extreme it backfires. It makes one vulnerable to all sorts of unfair practices and experiences, and ultimately results in feeling that you are doing too much and getting too little back.
Being short changed and having to “take it” is a painful chronic state. You appease, you forgive, and you continue to give more than you could possibly get back, in hopes that it will eventually work out. When all you can do is give more and never set boundaries or negotiate a fair exchange with your adult sibling, then you are really living in the past and holding onto a role that is totally maladaptive in the present circumstances. All relationships must evolve and change with time if they are to be healthy, vital and real relationships rather than empty shells of dutiful exchanges.
Both of these women have something else in common. They can be hurt by their sisters but they could never show anger. Think about what that means. You're walking along the street and someone comes up to you and punches you in the belly. The automatic reflex is to be furious at anyone who would assault your body. These women both feel that their sisters are taking advantage of them and essentially assaulting them. They are deeply hurt and at times they can talk about being angry, but the anger has never been expressed. The anger has been stuffed down with food. The anger has actually been banished. They have disconnected themselves from the automatic bodily feeling of anger. But no one can get away with this pattern without paying a heavy price.
They have both interrupted a critically important conversation with themselves. Anger is automatic, and natural, and useful. If you banish your natural response your mind can not work properly. Anger leads to problem-solving, because when you feel angry you have to figure out what to do about your anger. You have to do some mental work to move it from the raw anger of lashing out, which is the immediate impulse, to a more thoughtful and appropriate response to the other person. It may end up to be no more complicated than a conversation about fairness, responsibility, or boundaries. But when the anger, in its raw form is banished, no action takes place and you are left only with the hurt, and the added pain of feeling helpless.
In their minds, anger is dangerous because it can lead to certain actions that might jeopardize the relationship that they must keep intact at all costs. They don’t trust their ability to confront the relationship problems constructively and they don’t trust that there is an adult person somewhere behind the mask of their sisters who might be able to connect to them in a sane and fair way. But what if they are wrong? If they don’t try, they may never find out they no longer need to banish their anger with a cheeseburger.
When emotions are buried, relationships do not have an opportunity to get corrected and they remain frozen in time. The adult part of the sibling relationship is sacrificed to the never ending drama of disappointment and hurt, mirroring the painful parts of childhood, decades after these patterns should have become only memories.
Do you still have “frozen” relationships in your family that drive you to food?
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 6:16:13 PM | 6 COMMENTS
FRIDAY, AUGUST 20, 2010
All or None Thinking
As an emotional eater, when your life feels overwhelming and oppressive, you not only feel you want to eat, you actually need to binge. You have a desire to get away from it all, to get inside your own private familiar bubble, we call the food trance. When you just can’t take it anymore, you say to yourself... "I need this for me. I'm doing enough and I need my reward." But you won’t get the reward you are looking for if you apply “all or none” thinking to the situation that is oppressing you.
There are many reasons for periodically being overwhelmed or feeling oppressed by life, but the most persistent one is related to family roles adopted early in life that have not been modified over time. The most common role is taking responsibility for other members of the family, and encumbering yourself with the IMPOSSIBLE task of making everything all right, and fixing everyone. It is usually the most “sensitive” one in the family who gets caught in this role.
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I will use the case of a recent patient to illustrate the “all or none” thinking that has kept her burden active well beyond the time it should have been lifted in the course of development. (It probably would have been lifted if the emotional eating habit had not obscured the problem and left its potency intact.)
This woman, in her mid-50s, still carries with her the responsibility for making her 85 year old father happy, giving her mother the sweetness in life her father doesn’t give her, and taking care of her struggling sister. Part of her wants to move as far away from her family as possible to get out from under the constant burden, but another part of her not only enjoys some moments of family happiness but also has a true and loving care for the welfare of all three.
Her problem is not her family. Her problem is her “all or none” thinking. She can only be successful if she can do the IMPOSSIBLE. When having lunch with her father and mother she is only successful if he never gets angry or disagrees with her, and she can make sure that he is always nice to her mother. She has never succeeded at this for more than one half of one lunch. And she can only be successful with her sister, if she can cure her sister of her hypochondria.
In this “all or none” thinking trap the things she does do, and the peacemaking she does achieve, do not count if she is not 100% successful. The support she gives her sister is meaningless, if it isn’t meaningful by her standards of reality. The appreciation, often offered by all three of her family members, never penetrates. She didn’t make it all right, so she didn’t do anything, and has to try harder next time, and can never give up. That’s why the burden is overwhelming, because it is endless and forever frustrating. Therefore she needs the respite that she gets from her daily fill up at the 7-Eleven.
There is more to the origin of this erroneous thinking. In order to get away from the constant yelling in her house, the cheese sandwich became her first entry ticket into the food trance bubble. If only she could make everyone happy, the yelling would stop, and she could have some peace. She even gave up playing the music she loved as an accomplished violinist, because it didn’t bring the promised peace and quiet in the house that she hoped for.
She still has to make all of them “all right” in order to have some peace inside her head. So when she feels oppressed by all of this, she either shops or eats and does not care about the consequences. Because she deserves it for putting up with this for decades, and that is all that matters.
That's the situation. Here is one way out... It starts with taking reality into account and questioning her “all or none” thinking pattern. Something she had never done before, because she was not aware that she was doing it. She has to abandon her erroneous thinking which is... either she must flee from the city or she must succeed in an IMPOSSIBLE task. And she must give up striving for unachievable “perfectionist” goals.
She must look for a way to quiet her own mind that does not depend on stopping her family members from yelling at each other. This is what she needs to do to resume her adult development. This is what it means to be in her fifties and no longer live as if she were still at home. This is her “true” will that has been interrupted by food. She can break this pattern by exploring the options in-between the “all or none” extremes, from a current day reality perspective, and then make a new conscious choice.
The key here is making a conscious deliberate thoughtful choice that takes into account that she cares about her family but cannot do the IMPOSSIBLE. That means that she can choose how many times she talks to her sister and how long she spends on the phone and what kind of limits she can set without making her sister feel abandoned or add to her worries. She can do the same with her mother and father.
A remarkable thing happens when you make a deliberate choice that is based on the reality of your needs while still having consideration for others. At that moment, when you abandon a role that started in childhood and has been occupied without thinking or correction ever since, it feels like a prison sentence with no possibility of parole has been lifted. Making a deliberate choice changes your old mental image and reinforces your new sense of freedom and personal power.
If you don’t stop and make a conscious choice, the care taking role continues uncorrected, the oppression never goes away, and the strong cravings for food periodically erupt because the need for relief from this self imposed burden is incontestable. Choosing to see, act and feel differently, with an adult perspective, is the difference between being powerful or powerless.
Can you identify your “all or none” thinking trap?
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 10:30:02 PM | 14 COMMENTS
FRIDAY, AUGUST 13, 2010
TRUE WILL
In order to cure yourself of the obsession with food, you first have to walk away from the endless willpower battle between your conscious will to diet vs your unconscious will to binge or overeat. To do this, you have to reconnect to and trust your innate healthy “true” will. That’s how you will overcome the intense cravings for food and take control of your eating habits, as well as manage and enjoy your life as a proud adult.
One person asked, is the “true will” the same as the higher power in the 12 step program? That higher power has been described in so many different ways that I hesitate to answer. However, if trusting in the higher power is the way to reconnect and trust yourself, then the answer is yes.
You may be asking yourself, what is MY “true“ will, and how do I find it?
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It means that you stop listening to your own critical voice that second guesses everything you do or don’t do. Then you regain a perspective about who you are in the world and you discover that, like everyone else, you are imperfect and you have always been imperfect. Once you accept and embrace your imperfections, you realize you have been doing the best you can and you can start to forgive yourself for what you did not know. Then you can tune out the old criticisms and self doubts and trust yourself to live your life in the reality of your adulthood.
Trusting yourself in this way is like opening a gate. When that feat is accomplished, everything else can move through more easily. But before the gate can be opened, the emotional eater has to loosen the grip on his or her “security blanket” and realize, as one person said last week, “there is a whole new way of thinking available to you, if you stop interrupting your own thought processes with food.”
Those who have succeeded will tell you there is nothing to fear and everything to gain. So, why the hesitation, what is the fear about? The fear that a child has when you try to take away the security blanket, is that he or she will be overwhelmed with the terror of abandonment. As an adult you are afraid of getting lost in the weeds of your own emotional confusion. What people fear is that they will feel worse, not better, the critic within will get louder, more demanding and more scolding and they will feel even more powerless, once more a victim of being misunderstand and unappreciated. What you will learn once you release your “security blanket” is exactly the opposite of what you fear -- you will learn to trust your “true” will over the demanding perfectionism of your familiar critic.
When you trust what is real, you are free to define yourself by what you want or who you are rather than what your family, husband or neighbor want you to be. If you are smart, you don’t have to give up and appear to be dumb. If you want to have a healthy body, you don’t have to hide behind fat. If you want to be more attractive or outgoing, you don’t have to stay at home and pretend you don’t care. If you need to say no, you will say no, or the same with yes. As you learn to do this more, your “true” will becomes stronger, the will to be yourself, to live YOUR life, to accept and respond to reality as a mature adult.
When or how have you been able to mute your critic and listen to your “true” will?
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 3:53:41 PM | 8 COMMENTS
FRIDAY, AUGUST 06, 2010
Three Forms of Will Power
How many times have you had this thought?
"I have no willpower when it comes to food!"
Well it’s not true. You have plenty of will power. You have a determination to lose weight by dieting, and you have probably spent thousands of hours exercising that “will.” But there is something else you are determined to do, and that is to avoid certain feelings and thoughts about yourself that bother you.
That other “will” mandates that you eat to stuff down those feelings. In that sense, you have too much will power and you are out of balance when it comes to food. This battle of the two wills is endless unless you recognize that you actually have a third “will” power source.
There is a power within you which I call the “true will”, and that is the will to continue to mature, deal better with reality, and be proud of yourself as an adult who can make your life work. You know about this “true will” which is pushing you to stop hiding in the shadows or behind your fat. This true character of who you really are deep down inside is the part of you that you need to reinvest in or reinvent. You have known about it all along but have been afraid to admit it out loud, because you don’t know how to let it out safely. However, as you have seen from all the other comments to this blog, people have learned how to reconnect with themselves safely and have prospered.
I have been saying this in other ways in the last few blogs and today it may be even clearer to you. Once you take the leap of faith and start working on yourself instead of your diet, you will find a new source of energy and motivation, and your “true will” will have the power to make the right decisions in all areas of your life. That’s what it really means to have will power. That’s when you will be “cured” of your food obsession.
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Here is an example of the first two forms of “will” caught in a vicious cycle on a daily basis.
“I lose the strength to succeed at night. Until 5 o'clock in the evening....wow I made it, after that time to reward myself and food rewards me. So during the day I dare to hope and "after" I am driven to despair and failure.”
Instead of looking for another method, you fall into moods of despair that makes you even more stuck, and not just about food, but about yourself and your life. The failure to succeed with “willpower” spreads. Another comment from last week illustrates this quite clearly.
“Why not make changes right now? There's an easy answer to that one for me: How many "fresh starts" that quickly grow stale do I need? I've gotten tired of telling myself that this time will be different, when down inside I know it won't. I already KNOW that I should eat healthy, I already KNOW that I'd feel better if I would exercise, I already KNOW about all the things I SHOULD do... and would actually enjoy doing, but don't! It's one thing to avoid "dieting" because it doesn't sound like fun, but if I can't even bring myself to do things that I enjoy that would also make me feel better, how likely is it that this approach will be any different?”
It’s not going to end up any differently as long as she thinks she knows everything she needs to know in order to break the emotional eating pattern. By this time in her life she probably knows as much about nutrition and exercise as anybody. But everything she knows operates within the old willpower framework. If you know what to do, and have willpower, then you just do it. If you don’t, there must be something wrong with you, right? No, there is nothing wrong with you except you are relying on the wrong method that has been sold to you all these years.
Why do we keep on going down the wrong path? We have described the right path so many times in this blog, and on our website, and so many people give testimonials to their results when they go down that path. The answer is that staying in the old willpower framework keeps your focus away from the real emotional issues that are confusing to you. You are willing to be powerless over food in order to protect yourself from being powerless about your life. It’s a bargain you make with yourself to protect yourself from pain.
“The biggest fear for me was that my feeling about myself didn't match who I admired, who I wanted to be. Sure, I want to be slim and beautiful and confident but I felt that would always be for others not me. I wasn't worthy. It's taking a lot of digging a lot of pain and a lot of time to sort out where that came from. The eating and other addictions helped to ease the pain from the times it just felt like too much and I couldn't stop the head chatter. Up until recently it was only way to get any relief. It's helped so much to realize that it would be a logical way to handle that grief if you didn't have any other way to deal with it. So I stopped being so hard on myself about slipping up. I am just trying to pay attention and find grown up ways to help myself when I want to eat or drink or whatever more than I want to live. It's been so freeing, way more than it's been scary. The scary part was trying to take away my security blanket addictions before I had another way to look at things.”
“Wow I love it when others can put into words what I can't for myself yet. I too know what I should do and not do. I have known forever! The 'should's' are the tools I've used to beat myself up with for for years. I need a new set of tools!”
It’s all about giving up your security blanket. And in this case, the security blanket is your misplaced faith that just plain old willpower is the answer to your weight problem.
What does your “true will” need to know, say or do?
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 4:54:51 PM | 12 COMMENTS
FRIDAY, JULY 30, 2010
Fear, Hope and Growth
We’ve firmly established that in order to “cure” yourself of a food obsession, you have to do some personal development work, i.e. reinventing some part of yourself. The comments from last week both add to the list of what it means to reinvent yourself and at the same time, re-introduce the fear of doing so. Today I want to discuss that fear.
Growing and learning from experience has such a positive value and outcome, it is always liberating. No one, who has ever grown and found deeper parts of themselves, has ever said they were sorry they did it. So why is it that what seems so right and natural, is also seen in such a dark light as something dangerous and impossible? It is true that whatever is avoided tends to grow dangerous in the dark recesses of your imagination. If you have been avoiding growth by interrupting it with compulsive or binge eating, then whatever you have avoided has grown to monstrous proportions inside your mind. The longer you avoid it, the more frightening it becomes to look at.
I can assure you that there is nothing to fear and everything to gain. However, some of your emotions may be telling you a different story. One of the comments from last week illustrates the extreme degree of fear and avoidance. -- “I've been reading this blog for a while now. Sometimes I am too afraid to read it. I guess that's what you would call avoidance.”
She is too afraid to even learn about emotional eating in this very safe venue probably because it might tempt her to look at herself, and learn about herself. But she does look a little, and has a peek at what we now know is a familiar starting fear for almost everyone who becomes a member of the Shrink Yourself program. -- “Why? I don't know. What am I afraid of? Good question. I don't know really, but it may just be failure. Because I've failed so many times before.”
Now she is intrigued and determined to do something more, meaning maybe something like this can work, and maybe she can look deeper. -- “I decided to finally buy your book and get serious. Stop avoiding. Thanks for making your blog available for people like me who are comforted by reading it.” However, then she also pulls back her commitment so she can escape if she needs too. -- “I will eventually, hopefully, be inspired to make positive changes when the time is right.”
Why not make positive changes right now?
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I quote this person because she reminds us of how extremely dangerous it seems to start having an honest conversation with ourselves. One member just volunteered a remarkable testimonial about our program, but it starts with the fact that she hung around the Shrink Yourself site for almost two years before she decided to join the program. She put all of her toes and both feet in the water and kept them there for two years before she took the plunge. And here’s a small piece of what Laura said when she finished the program.
"I have been a binge eater for about 40 years. FORTY YEARS! I have tried every diet, every weight loss program and weight control method out there. I can tell you the calorie and carbohydrate content of pretty much every food as well. I know from diets. I started SY formally 11 weeks ago, although I purchased the book, and came to the site regularly from about 2 years ago. I have also tried many therapies to get rid of my Compulsive Overeating....but nothing clicked. But that is all in the past. Since starting SY, I have not binged. Once. More importantly I have no desire to binge. I have learned, that when I feel like eating I am actually seeking relief from some anxiety or issue -- and I stop and try to figure out what it is. As soon as I do, the feeling to eat goes away.”
That’s a great success story, but that’s Laura’s story, not your story. Another person tells us why she is so blocked from considering that she might get the same result. -- “Oblivion. I stuff myself or eat what is not healthy because food is my drug of choice, and I'm seeking escape from reality- oblivion- because it's easier to be a failure than to face reality.”
In this way of thinking, facing reality (having an honest conversation with yourself) is seen as a greater danger than thinking of yourself as a failure. Failing is seen as a benefit, a protection from this greater danger. I am sure this is a deeply felt position, but does it make sense? Seeing yourself as a failure is such a painful blow to your self esteem and self worth. Can reality actually be that much more painful than having a lack of self confidence? Well it wasn’t for this member when she found the courage to have an honest conversation with herself.
“I'm giving this a test drive. When I don't intercept my feelings with food, I'm surprised by what I'm learning. Throughout my life, I've felt my self-worth depended on others' assessment of me. I've allowed people to push me around rather than standing up for myself. As I reflected on relationships with others in my life, I see how I've allowed others to control me. I've given away my power. I have sought the approval of others at the expense of losing myself. It's time for change. It's time for me to get back in the driver's seat.”
She tried one simple step. She stopped “intercepting” her own feelings and started listening to her own voice. She simply listened to what she must have been saying to herself for decades, but didn’t want to hear. By not paying attention to her own needs, she became stuck, and powerless. Although it may be painful to look deep inside, it will open new doorways to a new way of being and eating.
What actually happens when you give yourself a chance to get unstuck, is the usually the opposite of what you are afraid of. You are irrationally afraid of an outcome that is worse than failure. And yet you also have an inner knowing and hope that being honest with yourself is the right thing to do. By working through your issues, and resolving this mysterious conflict, you will find a piece of your own truth that will set you free from the constrictions you learned and accepted as a child.
Will this woman really spoil what she has if she stops burying her emotions and feelings? --
“I am afraid to look inside. I fear it will be like opening Pandora's box. I was an emotional teenager and my family said they had to walk on eggshells around me. I remember my father saying he felt sorry for anyone that would ever wind up with me. At the time I didn't care - I felt alive and creative and passionate. My husband was attracted to those qualities at first but I realized they were scary and foreign to him as well. So for the sake of my husband and our three kids and perhaps also to prove my dad wrong I buried my emotions and feelings as much as I could. I am 42 now, but for some reason still fear that if I let my feelings out I'll be back on that unpredictable teenage roller coaster. But I won't ever know that for sure until I open the box...”
How would you describe your inner dialogue between
your fear of failure and your hope for success?
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 8:14:30 PM | 11 COMMENTS
FRIDAY, JULY 23, 2010
Reinventing Yourself: Part 2
Emotional eating is a way of interrupting the natural conversation that is taking place within you, between your mind and your brain. Your brain continuously sends you messages in the form of feelings and thoughts and makes a demand on your mind to think in order to sort them out and figure out how to respond. This is the way that people grow, change, mature and recover from their childhood experiences as they go through the phases and stages of adult life.
If you put the “mute” button on by overeating or binging, you shut off the flow of wisdom and intelligence of your own brain, and the maturation process comes to a halt. The normal process of reinventing yourself in little daily steps doesn’t happen, but the need to reinvent yourself doesn’t go away. You are aware that you have to change in some way, but you don’t do it because you are too scared to try. Then you get behind in the personal development work you need to do.
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Human nature is such that when we know we have to make some changes in ourselves and we don’t do it, we feel guilty and our self confidence is drained. That’s when we feel powerless, and that’s when the powerlessness is turned into cravings that are so intense we think there is another person inside of us making us eat too much. Getting back into the flow of the normal maturation process (reinventing yourself) is the “cure.” Because when that happens, the food addiction is broken and the cravings go away. Then you are free to stay in touch with yourself on an ongoing basis.
The concept is simple. Think instead of eat! Listen to yourself rather than run away from yourself and think about what your brain is telling you. One of the comments last week strikes this note well. “Maybe it's not so much reinventing ourselves as healing and fully identifying with the peace and power that has always been our true Self.” I agree, that is where you want to end up, but in order to get there you have to drill down to the particulars of your life, and put your intentions into action. You need a method to practice the principles.
You have to change your attitude first, as another comment so well illustrates. “I want to reinvent myself by feeling those feelings. No mute button for me - no automatic reaching for food to cope with emotional hunger. Wow, this is frightening.” But why is it so frightening to feel your own feelings? It is not frightening for other people who have made a point to stay in touch with their feelings. They see their feelings as desirable rather than formidable. But if you have been afraid of your own feelings for a while, your normal feelings are misinterpreted as dark and dangerous, ultimately leading to the one of the worst of all human conditions, which is shutting them off and then feeling powerless.
Remember, you are trying to teach yourself to recognize that you are not powerless, that you have choices and options, and that you can be creative about how you respond to your feelings. And when you actually make new choices, change some patterns and take some risks, you are rewarded immediately for your work and bravery, as the next two comment so well illustrate.
“I’m now someone who is in charge of her own life, the queen of her castle. I get to make the decisions now about what is right for me. It isn't easy but it feels great!” -- “Soon I am taking a kayaking class. I drum, play bells, and am in a hiking club. There was a time when I was afraid to walk alone in my backyard at night. No more.”
How YOU have to reinvent yourself is specific to you and to your life situation, and often means abandoning an old role that you adopted in your early life or in your marriage. When you look at the list that I extracted from the comments over the last two weeks, you’ll see that these are nothing more than the daily tasks of everyday life. Nothing too exotic or even very dramatic. Just real life challenges that require certain qualities and skills.
Here is the “Reinvention” list so far...
Even thought I am hesitant to do what I don’t want to do, due to lack of confidence and concern about making a wrong decision, I am going to organize my weekend chores and long term tasks.
Perhaps I need to re-invent myself in the role of their "parent". Come to think of it, they do act pretty childish lately. Can I be patient and get them to act rationally?
I want to dare to love as much as I actually love without the fear of potential loss causing me to hold back.
I want to dare to look foolish and be wrong so that I stop being so reserved that I miss out on things.
I desperately want to reinvent myself, I have before. It was always at the beginning of a new relationship, then I fell into my old beat-yourself-up ways.
I am just in the process of reinventing myself and am terrified of loneliness but need to embrace that if I am going to be the honest person that I intend to be.
I need to confront bullying persons at work.
I am going to be my own personal coach i.e., having the conversation without the interruption of food.
I will put myself in situations where I am visible and taking some leadership.
I need to love myself enough to make physical movement, prayer, sleep and creativity a priority.
I am not going to be afraid to take control of finances.
I will rely on my internal strength rather than some external object, like food.
I am putting myself in situations where I will be relied on and realize I've been reticent in the past.
I have been dreaming of confrontations with others. Something I've avoided like the plague in the past. Like my neighbor said of her angry husband; “it may be unpleasant, but it’s not the end of me if someone is upset.”
I will keep clear boundaries and not feel guilty if I'm mad.
I am going to act on my own behalf, using the anger to say "enough is enough" - so others will then know the authentic me.
How have you been afraid to change and what new behavior are you ready to try now?
Or
What insights have helped you see how you need to reinvent yourself?
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 5:23:16 PM | 24 COMMENTS
FRIDAY, JULY 16, 2010
Reinvent Yourself
Emotional Eating is not simply a bad habit, but a symptom of a much more complex human phenomenon that involves all parts of your mind and life.
Recently a well respected figure in the world of adult development died, Dr. Robert Butler, someone who I knew professionally, but not personally. He too wrote about the life cycle and the issues of adapting to the various phases of adulthood. His primary focus was on post retirement, where my focus has been on mid-life crisis.
His thesis is that people have to “reinvent” themselves many times during the course of life, and that this is especially important if one is going to enjoy healthy aging. Although we haven’t used that particular term, that is core of what we do here. In order to fully break the emotional eating habit and free yourself from binging, compulsive eating or the food obsession, you have to reinvent yourself!
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That may sound like a tall order, if you let the wrong image of that control your thinking. The initial image suggests you have to change everything about yourself, including your hair, your wardrobe and life partner. That's not what he means, and it’s not what I mean.
We have already seen from the comments on the blogs, that reinventing yourself can mean something as simple as setting boundaries, being able to recover your voice and make yourself heard rather than hide, or developing an adult proactive attitude to all the ups and downs of relationships at work or at home. These are all obvious and on the surface. They might even sound simple and easy to do just by making a decision to do them. However, it is very difficult for the person who has not done them before, particularly if they have been thinking about doing it for a long time and not yet taken the steps to make the changes happen.
Reinventing yourself is nothing more than acquiring those life skills and self confidence that you probably admire and envy in another person. You may have other strengths that you are proud of, but what you envy in them is what you don’t have, and you envy because on some level you know you could develop if you worked at it. But these other people did not have the same upbringing that you did, did not have to adapt to the same set of parents, or go through the same difficult transitions, or deal with the same family dynamics. We've all had different experiences in life and have re-adapted to them in a way that has worked well enough so far.
The question of reinventing yourself comes up when
“well enough” is no longer good enough.
It's somewhat of a paradox. On one hand, reinventing yourself can simply be a matter of making a decision to take a reasonable risk, it’s about common and ordinary behavior, others like you have already done it for themselves and demonstrated that it can be done and it is safe. But that’s not how it feels when you think about doing it. It feels almost impossible, like climbing a high mountain without any preparation. For a person who has been shy most of their life to suddenly speak up and have their voice heard seems like it's asking too much. Of course it is not really asking too much, and other people do it all the time.
There is a steady pulse under the surface that pushes personal
evolution and change while we are busy living our daily lives.
However, the whole process of reinventing yourself and recovering from your childhood is stopped in its tracks by emotional eating. Emotional eating blocks normal growth and development. When a signal occurs that is prompting you to look at yourself and reevaluate and take some risk and practice something new in order solve problems or feel better about yourself, you mute that signal. You might binge or reach for food which blurs the message your brain is sending to you before it gets too clear. Emotional eating is like having a constantly interrupted conversation with yourself. Every time it gets interesting and important, eating interrupts that internal conversation, and the growth process is halted. Your brain doesn’t give up, the message for growth is relentless, it keeps coming up and you keep stuffing it down. That’s why binges and overeating occur in unpredictable and unpreventable cycles.
You can see from the comments on the blogs, how people are struggling to reinvent themselves. They are dealing with food obsession on the surface, but really it only represents the deeper struggle, which is to grow and be free and recover from old childhood adaptations that no longer work. The Shrink Yourself program will help you grow and live your life in the broadest sense of the word. People are always surprised, at the end of the program, to find that the cravings have gone away. That’s because the cravings were nothing more than the emotional hunger for growth and the push to reinvent yourself...
Given this time in your life, how do you need to reinvent yourself?
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 5:05:00 PM | 17 COMMENTS
FRIDAY, JULY 09, 2010
To Eat too much or To Be Free?
The comments on last week’s blog were perfectly timed, they were all about independence from past events and perceptions that reinforce the tyranny of food. A good theme for the Fourth of July week. Thank you all, for your willingness to share openly. Today I am going to focus on the comments that illustrate the theme of freedom.
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ml said:
If I don’t face my fears from the past, I will stay stuck using overeating to insulate me from the intimacy that I both desire and fear. I first engaged in binging a few months into an abusive marriage to soothe my anxiety and fear. Now that I’m free of that, will I be able to take off the padding I used to shield myself? What do I have to gain? Freedom from the overeating that became a self-imposed prison. Freedom to feel the feelings that have been trapped inside. Freedom to explore my anxiety and fear and use them as an impetus for growth. Freedom to live without hiding. Freedom to make mistakes, get up, dust myself off and keep moving forward. Freedom to have a voice. Freedom to love myself, finally. Hurrah for Independence Day!
There it is... to be fat or to be free, or more accurately, to give in to outdated fears or exercise your right to be free from the past. What I see over and over again is that people who begin to live their life from an adult perspective, become cured of their food obsession. Every freedom declared in the comment above represents a healthy adult perspective on current reality.
It takes some insight and adult grit to start moving into an adult perspective if you have been absent for too long. Here’s how one person described it.
mbt54 said:
If I give into my fears of being disconnected to others and of harming them by asserting myself, I will get the same results: feeling inferior and not having skills to create healthy boundaries resulting in anxiety and a desire to stuff my feelings with food comfort. There is no other way out but through. The temptation is to do what is familiar and easy. I have to trust that going into new territory will be the only cure.
Reality is her friend, as I mentioned last week. Learning the skills of setting appropriate boundaries, asserting ones self and having a voice are the rights and skills every adult needs to exercise, practice and improve. The reality is different than her childhood fears. She does not harm anyone by asserting herself in reality, only in her imagination.
And here’s a tip on how to practice re-framing reality with an adult perspective... observe yourself trying new behavior, step by step, over and over, until you have proven to yourself that the fears hanging out in your head are no longer true.
Reinventing said:
I always used to binge around my mother and sister. My past relationships with them kept me from moving forward as my own person, even if I did not have their approval. As a child, my sister took on the role of "father" of the house, since my mother was working all the time to make ends meet. Consequently, she was seen as the parent, even in my adult life. I ate around them, because i am stuffing down my adult self. I felt that they are always judging me, and I never quite measured up. I know that that's just my perception--reality is not like that. Since SY, I am learning to set boundaries with them, insist on saying my peace, and am beginning to separate myself from their judgements and approval--or not. It feels uncomfortable but that's Ok--I am doing it, and with more practice, those uncomfortable feelings will disappear. I love SY, for me...all the pieces just FIT--its like a miracle. As Dr. Gould said, my subconscious is FINALLY catching up to the rest of my brain!! : I have not binged in 11 weeks. It is interesting, that even though, setting boundaries HAS been uncomfortable and anxiety producing--if I am making improvements in my life, those type of anxiety feelings seem to be OK, and they have not caused me to eat. Weird eh?
The anxiety associated with growth doesn’t make you eat. The baseless fears of the past are what make you eat. Remember reality is your friend.
How are you embracing reality now in your struggle to free yourself from past fears?
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 7:01:01 PM | 15 COMMENTS
FRIDAY, JULY 02, 2010
Reality is Your Friend
We’ve been looking at the childhood influences of the past that have led to the current obsession with food. Last week, I asked for comments about what is going on in your life now, that you would like to wish away. We all know that wishing for things to go away will not provide relief from a food obsession. However, it does brings to the forefront the situations in the present that trigger us to overeat. And if we look closer, it will give us clues to the qualities we need to own and develop to live more fully in the present. Particularly those qualities we have hidden due to the painful family dynamics from our past.
Let’s look at some of the comments so we can see the link between the past, the wishes of the present, and the growth that needs to be completed before the obsession can be cured.
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The Family Dynamics:
“Realizing that disappearing is what I felt like I needed to do in order for everyone around me to be okay. I sensed my mother's passive-aggressiveness and feelings of overwhelm with many children. My parents arguments and the demands of life were very disturbing to me and, being a child, internalized these conflicts as somehow due to me.”
Her Adaptation:
“If there was any way I could reduce them, I would. So I tended to be the nice, shy kid who did everything to avoid rocking the boat. So personal power is something I relinquished in order to keep the family afloat.”
She sacrificed her personal power, but the normal urge to have a voice and be heard and understood did not go away, it just went underground, and got covered up by a top layer of food.
“I stuffed myself and indulged in junk because if I asserted myself, certainly it would be the tipping point and the parents would divorce and everyone would destroy each other in arguments. My family was my security and it seemed often to be on the edge of destruction.“
Her Insight:
“I rebelled with food. I asserted myself with food. Today I choose to be in charge of my choices and I can have a voice by asserting myself in real life.”
Her Growth:
She is recovering her sense of personal power, the right to live her own life, have her own opinions, and express herself in a sensible and effective manner. She will be able to do this on a consistent basis, if she corrects her childhood misunderstanding that doing so will inevitably hurt others, destroy her safety, and make her a guilty destructive person.
When she gets there and practices that on a regular basis, all her cravings will disappear. She will be cured of her obsession because she will have grown into a fully enfranchised adult who is living in the present and not in the past. There is no mystery here. The path is clear. She will succeed as long as she remembers the difference between the past and the present. Reality is her friend... it supports her cure.
Here’s another example of how important that distinction is, and this is even more clear because the past is not the distant past of childhood, but the closer past of an earlier marriage.
“20 years ago I went through a dreadful nightmare of a marriage and divorce, which was the beginning of this relationship with food. I am in fact happily married now, but the relationship with food stayed. Now that I have stopped the behaviour sustaining the relationship with food I see that - wait a minute - it's safe now. It's OK. I don't need to do this anymore. It's like running and running and running away from danger and not turning around to see that you've run far enough away. The danger is gone. Turn around and look.”
This is growth. She is living in the present and not haunted by the demons of the past. She was able to identify the mistake and update her view of the world. Looking at current reality without the fear of the past is her new best friend.
Another woman said something quite similar, but she is still haunted by the memories of the past that are potentially hurting her good relationship in the present.
“Something Andy said reminds me of what I wish would go away in my life - my fear of intimacy in my marriage. I love my husband very much but am very scared of feeling vulnerable. What if I allow myself that intimacy and then I'm wrong again? What if I get blindsided like I did in my first marriage? I hold myself back in this relationship but do I even want that to change? Am I willing to risk?”
When she conquers her fear of intimacy and realizes that her past fears are compromising her current success, she will be well on the road to the cure. If she doesn’t, this fear is big enough and strong enough to keep her enslaved to food.
What mistakes might you be making by NOT facing your fears from the past
with a new perspective based on current reality?
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 1:12:18 PM | 12 COMMENTS
FRIDAY, JUNE 25, 2010
Using Food to Disappear
I would like to continue the exploration of how the events from our past have set us up for the current food obsession. And how important it is to "open these doors" and walk through them with a new perspective. The following comment from last week, by Bonita, vividly captures the essence of the problem, which is using food to "disappear."
“There was always so much shouting at our dinner table when I was a kid. My mother took a lot of time cooking beautiful meals - German cooking, rich food, always much more than we could eat. She was a good cook, but my Dad used suppertime as a fault-finding mission. First he started with the cauliflower and then moved on to the kids. Food and criticism in our house went together like hot dogs in buns. Mom always said her good food was wasted because it went down our throats in lumps. You can’t even call what we did eating. It was more like stuffing ourselves to the point of oblivion. Who tastes anything when there’s a gun pointed at your head? And why would you even need to know when your stomach was full? That wasn’t the point of eating. The point of eating in my house was to avoid what was going on around me, and once you got past the third pork chop, it worked!“
There it is, as real and clear as it can be. How one learns to override the biological signs of fullness in order to go beyond them to achieve a state of oblivion. How else could one disappear from a repugnant and dangerous reality at a family dinner table.
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In my book, and in the Shrink Yourself program, we call the state of oblivion, The Food Trance. And when you are having intense cravings to stuff yourself, you are actually having what we call Phantom Hunger, rather than biological hunger. The unconscious goal is to "disappear" from the painful reality of the situation that reminds us of the past. The memory is replayed in the mind as if it is still the truth. Our past experiences are tied to the current reality by our outdated but still active beliefs about what food means to us.
As a grown woman, Bonita still believes that she is as POWERLESS as she was at the family dinner table. Food was, and still is, her protection against the danger of her father’s whithering criticism, which was an assault on her self worth. Continuing to use food in this way gives her a false sense of safety against a danger that no longer exists.
“ I always found it amazing when I went over to a friend’s home for supper and the mother dished up one plate of food for each person and put it in front of us. Why aren’t people asking for seconds here? Was this family being punished? And why are these people laughing at the dinner table? Isn’t that dangerous? So it’s very hard for me to adjust to the fact that the purpose of eating isn’t to make myself feel like I’ve left the planet, nor are reasonable portions a cruel method of torture. As you might guess, I need a lot of practice learning how to read my stomach’s signals. I’m 64 years old. My stomach has been waiting a long time for this.“
There are many familiar pathways to the food obsession that start in childhood. Notice how the family dynamics of the past, in the nine insightful statements below, have shaped the current perspective on reality.
When I was young I was always consoled by being bribed with food. I too tend to stock up on goodies to take home after work and eat my way through them, feeling bloated, uncomfortable and guilty afterwards.
I was always the "good girl" and I was always praised for it. My sister was the wild child who exhausted my parents and I was the easy one. As an adult it is very hard for me to do anything that causes disruption to anyone. I am easy-going and flexible to a fault. Most of the time I don't even know what I want .
I was the "good girl," too, although I didn't receive a great deal of praise and attention for it. I was one of several children with a father prone to rages/mood swings and a mother who was often depressed and overwhelmed. I was the middle child, often overlooked, who tried to accommodate/placate my demanding father and siblings. Some of my warmest memories are of sneaking away with my mother to the store for ice cream and other treats. I have a hard time identifying my needs and wants because I always considered everyone else first. Perhaps obsessive eating for me is my "inner rebel" screaming to be heard and nurtured. I am so ready to make peace with myself and stop sabotaging myself.
I was the "smart" one in my family. The one who made perfect grades, who got recognition for it and subsequently my Dad could be the proud bragging papa. I loved for my Dad to brag on me. Whenever he wanted to brag on one of his children, he would talk about me. So I was always striving to be perfect, to be recognized.
I don't like any one to be praised, i like to be the center of attention, i like to be the best.. and i never admit that i was wrong even when i am, i shift the blame to some1 else!! i am the smart one in my family, i always like to be the best
I was never intimate with my mother, I never felt unconditional love from her, she was distant. Mom chose to leave my father and us girls when I was sixteen. I am now 55. Our father did his best but he too, was distant and distracted with all the responsibilities on his plate. I realize that I feel unlovable and undeserving of love. I am constantly trying to prove myself to others.
I think I was then left with the feeling that I have no control. I have no self control now when I eat. I binge almost everyday and have gained 40 lbs in a short time. Not only do I sabotage myself with food, I drink a lot. That's my way of rebelling against my mom. I guess I'm the "wild child" in the family. I'm the only one that doesn't have a 4.0 or exceeds in sports.
The part of the past I need to put in a new perspective is the victim, learned helplessness, mentality my parents taught me. My mother is constantly worrying and fretting and acts more like an anorexic with food whereas my father is completely complacent and overeating is his only reward in life.
I grew up as a child of a hoarder. my mother's OCD controlled my life: constantly keeping me indoors, calling me incessantly if i went to a friend's house until all my friend didn't want to be friends anymore, telling me that her house was a mess because of me, etc.... the only thing that i was allowed to control was food. she never monitored my food intake and would reward me w/ food. so, here i am w/ food issues.
These comments highlight some of the deeper patterns that help us understand "WHY" we have issues with food. It's important to recognize these experiences in order to recover from them, which is what we help you do inside the Shrink Yourself program.
For now, let's identify what is triggering your food obsession today!
What is happening in your life that you wish would go away?
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 5:12:35 PM | 16 COMMENTS
SATURDAY, JUNE 19, 2010
Blinded by the Obsession with Food
Every time I see a new patient come into my office with a food obsession, I am reminded of how durable the obsession is, and how difficult it is for the person to see what is really going on. From a therapist's perspective, what I am about to describe may sound obvious. However, the person who is struggling with the food obsession is practically blind, when it comes to seeing the source of the obsession.
A woman in her 50's came to see me after reading my book. She is an educated and intelligent woman who has a small profitable business and is happily married, with an adult son and four grand children. However, she was feeling totally desperate.
"I've been losing the same 15 pounds on and off for the last 40 years! I've tried every diet and nothing works. But I'm not ready to give up."
She went on to describe in a very tearful and painful way, her life history with a father who tyrannized her and a mother who couldn't protect her. Her siblings gave in to the father but she remained the rebel of the family. She was constantly getting herself into trouble but never giving up or giving in to her father, who was occasionally kind to her but more often brutally angry with her. This is a familiar story to me, since many of my patients who have an obsession with food also have a difficult family history that continues to cause them a great deal of emotional pain.
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When I asked about her eating patterns, she told me she mostly binges either at night or on the way home from work when she starts thinking about her day. During the day she is too busy and active but when she has time to think, she begins to feel too much emotional pain. So on the way home she will stop at a fast food place for a fix.
"I keep on sabotaging myself, punishing myself and feel terrible about it, but I can't stop it."
Right there we have the blind repetitious pattern. The events of her childhood are long past but the memory is alive deep down inside and causes emotional pain. To ease the pain she rebels against herself in the same way she rebelled against her father. She punishes herself by being overly harsh and critic of herself, as he would have punished her in the past.
She is stuck in a cycle of an old family drama which gets repeated over again every day of her life. The drama is played out with food as the leading character. When I pointed this out to her, her eyes opened widely and she said innocently "I never thought about that."
She was so focused on the food and the 15 pounds that she never thought about the origin of the pain that was dominating her life. Since she couldn't put it into a current perspective, she couldn't find the pathway out of her stuckedness.
"I now remember that every single day of my life I was told that I deserve to be punished. It was not only my father but my aunt and sometimes my mother. I continued to rebel and get in trouble at school and that only exacerbated their telling me I needed to be punished, which made me rebel even more."
At the core of her obsession are two deeply embedded competing beliefs. One is her belief that she deserved punishment for being a defiant child in response to her tyrannical father. The other strong belief is that she was the brave one in the family who had pride and would never give in to the father. But at age 55 she had not yet decided which of these beliefs was correct so she blindly repeats the cycle by taking care of herself as a good person and then punishing herself as a bad person. It is all played out on those 15 pounds that go up and down, representing these two beliefs, both of which are obscured by her preoccupation with food.
It's important to remember that the food obsession is part of the life cycle journey to maturation. There is always a historical story going on in the person's mind that has not yet been resolved. People hold onto their obsession with food and are resistance to insight because on some level they believe that their problem cannot be resolved, and that they are better off not knowing about what is going on in their mind.
This patient did not want to end up believing that she was truly a bad person who deserved to be punished, which was the belief that dominated her earlier life. However, if she isn't that bad person who deserves to be punished, then who is she now? She can acknowledge and honor her adult self as she continues to make the distinction between the dynamics of the past and her current life situation.
That's how curing an obsession with food will open up your life. The food obsession occupies your mind space to protect you from your worst fears about yourself and at the same time prevents you from overcoming those old irrational self doubts. Finding your cure to your food obsession is more important to your growth than just being able to control your weight.
What part of your past do you need to put into a new perspective?
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 1:14:37 AM | 15 COMMENTS
FRIDAY, JUNE 11, 2010
ALMOST CURED
A patient came in to see me the other day who I hadn't seen for three months. She was doing well and in the final stage of being "cured" of her food obsession. She decided to scheduled this appointment to "reach a higher level" and to complete the process.
However, in the three days just before her appointment, she had a little relapse.
I remember when she started to gain weight right before a visit back home. She was afraid that her sister would be too envious of her for having both a good life, and her weight under control. She was willing to be fat and angry at herself in order to ward off the envy.
I mentioned that: "It appears that your old fear of success has come back to haunt you. Success was dangerous for you then, and still is now, but probably for a different reason." This time she was asking for a deeper insight to deal with her core fear of success.
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As the session went on she told me about all of her successes with food and with her life, both at work and at home. One important success was her decision to take care of herself. After a 13 hour day serving others, including her young son, husband, and full-time job, she now gives herself permission to watch television and relax. Last year she couldn't do that. Instead she would eat too much and make herself feel so sick she would have an excuse to go to the bedroom to watch television.
She had made real progress. She is now willing to declare that she has needs, limits, and the right to take care of herself. However, she told me this in a way that made me question her more. She didn't seem so confident about this simple, obvious and very legitimate need to take care of herself.
I asked her: "How can you be so uncertain about your right to do this! What else should you be doing after a 13 hour day?" She answered that maybe she should go to her desk and tackle the bills or do something else more productive. That is what her mother would do.
My reply to that was: "So apparently you're not quite sure that you are adult enough to decide to relax if that makes you different from your mother. Your mother represented the role model you grew up with. Now that you are an adult, you have to create your own rules. It is you who is pressuring yourself to do too much. Your mother isn't here. It is you who have rebelled against yourself and misused food to give yourself a much needed rest, because you were afraid to be honest with your true self. You have overcome that particular situation, so you can now watch television at night without feeling guilty. This demonstrates the origin of your guilt, which is making a false comparison between you and your mother."
My patient then told me that her mother envies her. Her mother can't stop working day and night and does not travel or take vacations. In fact, her mother has said several times that she would have liked to have had a life like her daughter has. Then she tells me she feels guilty now because this week she has time off from work.
Aha, I said. It all comes together in the three days before this appointment. You are proud of your success, you have another piece of the good life by having time off, and all that makes you a bigger target for your mothers envy. You are being successful, and yet still vulnerable to outdated patterns. And now you are tempted to overeat to shut this conflict out of your mind.
Although there is always more texture to the story than this vignette, it does illustrate the point I want to make. Which is that the last stage of the "cure" for the food obsession is all about completing your sense of being an adult, taking charge of your own life, and emancipating yourself from the rules and roles of the family dynamics.
Any outside observer wouldn't question her right to relax after a long day of service. She questioned it only because she wasn't quite sure she had the right, as a wife and mother of a ten year old, to be different than her mother, or the fortitude to withstand her mother's envy of her life.
She is in the final phase of being "cured" of her food obsession. To complete the process, she needs to continue to become a fully functioning adult in all sectors of her life. As an independent adult she will not need to compare herself to her mother. She will recognize that she does not have the power to change her mother nor does she have the responsibility to keep trying. She should enjoy the fruits of her good marriage, wonderful child and good job because there is no "real" reason to feel guilty.
What sector of your adult life has been sacrificed and covered up by an obsession with food?
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 1:02:01 PM | 12 COMMENTS
FRIDAY, JUNE 04, 2010
Use your Mind, Cure your Food Obsession, Change your Life!
Clarity of mind is both the "solution" and the reward that comes when you cure your obsession with food. But what exactly is "clarity of mind" and what is lacking in your life when it is absent?
Let's start with this insightful comment from last week's blog:
"I have been cured of my food obsession. It was a wonderful moment when I realized it happened, it felt like a huge internal pressure had subsided, and a new mental clarity had begun. I have literally grown up. I now know what it feels like to be a full functioning adult. I now experience all life has to offer instead of running away from it all."
There it is, stated as clearly as possible. An attainable goal. Freedom from the obsession with food! To live life with an open mind and heart. No longer running away from the fear of confronting reality, but instead making reality work for you.
Another person recognized that the food obsession was occupying too much of her mind and interfering with her life when she made the following comment:
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"Wow! It must feel amazing. I bet you could start to concentrate on other parts of your life. I cannot wait for that day.”
I'm sure you can imagine what it might feel like to be rid of the huge internal pressure that drives you to food even when you're not hungry? This obsession takes over your days and your nights and keeps you from living as a full functioning adult. The food obsession keeps you numb and exacts a very high price. Most of all, it robs you of your mental clarity.
Another responder longed for her version of mental clarity, a "focused and intentional life" to replace the food obsession that is currently occupying too much of her mental life:
"I was being capsized by uncomfortable emotions every time I saw a plate of food, a jar of candy."
We can all understand what it must feel like to be "capsized" by uncomfortable emotions or thrown out of your own boat. You spend most of your time trying to climb back on board to keep from drowning. The distant shore, or a focused "port" like mental clarity which can bring comfort feels like an illusion. So is the promise of adulthood. But these are not empty promises or illusions. These are real possibilities.
It takes a lot of energy to have a food obsession. You can't really focus on food day and night and also creatively make your life work. The food obsession crowds out the critical faculties required to carry out the adult activity of making your life work. Ending the food obsession is part of the larger life cycle struggle to achieve and maintain your independence and adulthood. Being an adult means you are running your own show.
As I wrote in my last posting, the process of maturing and emancipating yourself from food is critical to achieving this goal. These transitions happen in little ways, but these little ways build until one day there is a clear shift in your life. Your mind opens up, and you are finally in a position to decide what to eat, and when to eat. And soon, maybe not exactly tomorrow, but
soon, you can watch the food obsession retreat into another room, one with a locked door.
There's nothing quite like living with full consciousness. When the food obsession ends, your brain will no longer be foggy, or half-knowing. The eating part of your life will calm down,
the drama will end, and a whole future of discovery will beckon.
Being a fully functioning adult, living a focused intentional life, and taking care of other parts of your life is the reward you get when you break the food obsession and achieve clarity of mind.
Becoming an independent adult is a scary thing for everyone in some way or another.
What do you think you are afraid of?
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 6:21:04 PM | 13 COMMENTS
FRIDAY, MAY 28, 2010
HEAD TRANSPLANT CURES WEIGHT PROBLEM
That’s what a patient told me the other day.
“I feel like I have had a head transplant. My cravings are gone, my obsession with food and weight which I have had for over thirty years, is gone. I have such mental clarity now, I can’t believe the fog I have been living in all these years. And I am losing weight without even trying, and I'm not even dieting.”
Did she have a head transplant? Not exactly, but she was "cured" of her obsession with food, and when relieved from the burden of that preoccupation, her mind expanded instead of her waistline.
I have been talking about this for years in my book and in the Shrink Yourself program. The weight problem, the reason most people come to our site, can only be mastered AFTER the obsession with food is gone. I have hesitated to call this a “cure” because everyone is not cured at the same rate. However, for those who are rid of their obsession with food, it seems like a miracle, it feels like a head transplant.
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I was surprised when three years ago I first heard members of the Shrink Yourself program write in spontaneous messages saying that around the fifth session a miracle happened to them. Their craving went away... just like that! They didn’t tell themselves to stop craving, which of course wouldn’t have made any difference anyway. They didn’t have a will power battle with themselves and achieve a temporary win. No, they said their cravings just disappeared. All of a sudden, after decades of struggle, they appeared to be "cured."
How does this happen? Here’s what I can tell you for sure. The miracle moment when the cravings disappear is an unconscious phenomenon that tells us that the brain has been reprogrammed. It didn’t just happen on it's own. It happened because the Shrink Yourself member and my patients were on a serious quest to figure out why food had become such an important part of their mental and emotional life.
Everyone who has succeeded in this way immersed themselves in the quest, and struggled with the issues I have described in my last series of blogs; frustration with marriage or a relationship, guilt and anger, defiant eating, and self doubts, and all the other issues that make up a dynamic life. In each struggle they gained an insight that proved to them over and over again that overeating and bingeing don’t resolve the pain of life problems. In fact, that behavior feeds a foggy mind, a brain that is in a state of half-knowing, and half-not wanting to know.
The immersion is important. Little bits of insight accumulate. Parts of the brain get reprogrammed at a time. It all leads to a “cure” that can take place in 5 weeks for some or 5 months for others. But when it happens, it feels like magic, something most people who struggle with compulsive eating or food obsession can’t even imagine happening.
Can you imagine what it would be like to be "cured" of your food obsession?
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 4:49:16 PM | 12 COMMENTS
FRIDAY, MAY 21, 2010
When you hurt too much, you eat too much.
I have described in the last several blogs how rebellion, self doubt, marriage, guilt, and perfectionism can cause you to overeat and or binge. I have said it before, ANY life frustration can be the trigger that makes you eat too much. And what makes you eat too much one day will be different than what makes you eat too much on another day. This can be disappointing if you are hoping to find and fix that ONE trigger that explains it all.
But if you look closer at yourself there IS something that ties it all together. It is not out there where things happen to you. It is inside you. The common denominator is the way YOUR mind and body responds to the frustrating triggers of a complex life.
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On bad eating days, those days when you have an overwhelming desire to binge or eat too much, you are really "hurting too much" and you don’t believe you can bear the pain. It's not the source of the problem that makes you overeat, its the pain you feel when you think about what's bothering you.
Why are some days good food days, and other bad food days?
The same frustrations that you might have been able to work through on one day, may feel very different on another day. It is likely that you are a very sensitive and caring person, so that things bother you on a deeper level than most other people. When too many negative things happen at once, particularly when you are tired and overworked, your sensitivity to being hurt increases and you feel more vulnerable. Some part of you rings the emergency signal because you feel flooded or overwhelmed, and anticipate being even more hurt and more overwhelmed.
Your out of control cravings are actually emergency reflexes.
You believe you have to eat to avoid some emotional disaster. You have to scale down the hurt by shutting down your mind. That’s why some people report that they eat themselves into oblivion, and continue to eat even if they are painfully full because they must get out of themselves into another mental world. It’s not much different than getting drunk.
Unless you change this pattern, you won’t be able to control your eating. “Emergencies” will always trump your best intentions, and it’s only a matter of time until you just give up in the face of this mysterious other part of you that clicks in and takes over.
So, how can you change this pattern?
How can you turn off this reflex, which we call the “Hunger Switch”. You can’t turn it off if you are convinced you will hurt so much you can’t bear it. You CAN turn it off, and thousands have, by learning from your own real life experiences that the hurt you are predicting is not at all unbearable, and no more frustrating or impossible to handle than it is on good food days, when you feel in control.
You have to prove to yourself that no disaster will occur if you interrupt this reflex long enough to pause and start thinking about what is bothering you. You have to prove this to yourself, over and over again, until you are absolutely sure that it is true. That’s why in the first month of the Shrink Yourself Program we take you through all the exercises you need to safely experiment and discover for yourself that your "emergency" predictions have been erroneous.
Think of it as like recovering from knee surgery. It's painful to start stretching and walking at first, and becomes easier until you have recovered your full function at which time there is no pain at all. And that may sound easy compared to what I am about to ask you to consider...
When you are feeling hurt and overwhelmed and your "Hunger Switch" is turned on, what emotional disaster are you predicting when you grab for food to shut down your mind?
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 12:41:58 PM | 26 COMMENTS
SATURDAY, MAY 15, 2010
Doubting Doubts can make you Thin!
Last week I wrote that doubts make you eat too much. This week I am going to let those who responded tell you a little bit more about the struggle with self doubt in their own words. I will comment on each to shine a light on what I see in what is said. This blog is a little long because I decided that each response represented a different point of struggle, and I wanted you, the reader, to find something close and familiar to your own struggle.
Everyone struggles with self doubt, but when you have been using emotional eating to run away from your doubts, you have harmed yourself in ways that you could not have anticipated. When you run away from self doubts they become stronger and last longer. You will hear that clearly in the quotes below.
What you won't hear so clearly, and what I will comment on next week, is the fact that once you have learned how to deal with your self doubts in a new way, there is a real surprise. You actually release a very exciting part of yourself, a new passion or a new competency or a new attitude toward life. It is really quite wonderful and a big bonus to add to controlling your weight and the end of your obsession with food.
Self doubt is a fascinating, and very difficult part, of the human condition...
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COMMENT: I'd like to start with a success story. Her new perspective of reality is working. She is not perfect, she is not wonder woman, she is a human being.
POST: Overcoming my perfectionism has been a huge step for me and something I continue to work at. These days I'm much more comfy in my skin and not nearly as hard on myself as I used to be, but there are still pockets of self doubt to be addressed, "Bad mother" is a label I gave myself for shouting at the kids a little too often and is one that I have found hard to let go of, as well as a"lazy" label my Dad gave me over 25 years ago, which is a perfect, excuse the pun! label to beat myself up with whenever I feel my house isn't clean enough or I haven't got stuff done. Recently, rather than trying to get more done better, I have been concentrating on the art of self-acceptance, on getting comfy with NOT being perfect, with NOT feeling guilty for shouting at the kids or not getting stuff done. The weird thing is, the more I practice self-acceptance, the more I get done and the calmer I get! Being kind to myself and not beating myself up really seems to make me want to do stuff. I guess it's the old story that we all respond to love better than to hate - the carrot rather than the stick. So my advice is to quit perfectionism - there's no such thing - be kind and loving to yourself instead and if you can accept your "flaws" they really do become less of a problem. I still shout at the kids and wish I didn't, but I don't feel guilty about it, I just see it as A proof I'm human and not perfect and B work in progress - feedback so that I can do better next time, not failure!
COMMENT: Another person discovered and succinctly reported a method we use in the Shrink Yourself Program. Since being overly judgmental is not limited to yourself, you can practice not judging others first, then start to apply it to yourself. It's something everyone can try and benefit from.
POST: There are so many harsh judgments of people all around us all the time for such trivia. It is difficult not to get caught up in it. I am recognizing it now and choosing not to participate. I will not judge others harshly for minor mistakes. This helps me treat myself more kindly too.
COMMENT: This next statement represents the "defeated tone." When you still believe it's important to be perfect, you deny yourself the room you need to doubt your doubts.
POST: So am I getting this correctly. we eat because we are trying to be perfect or because we are trying to control. I definitely say that I eat too much because I doubt that I can follow some really strict plan forever and so why bother?
COMMENT: All the other posts below represent people who are struggling with their self doubts. However they are ahead of the game, because they are learning to recognize them, are hopeful and are open to daily insights.
Notice how powerful self doubts are in controlling one's life and how we continue to misinterpret circumstances to support the old negative labels we have given ourselves. Note how the origin of the self doubt label is tied to specific painful memories in the past and how hard it is to let go of them. It is very important to live in the present and continue to re-fresh your perspective of reality.
POSTS:
As a child I thought I wasn't good enough, and I had a mother who after I did a chore would do it over because I didn't do it right. This self doubt and low self esteem followed to adulthood.
Now still struggling with my self doubts and am I good enough syndrome. As a member of this program it has opened up a lot of feelings and now I can try and deal with them. Thank you for this blog, I really needed to read
my self doubt of whether I am a good enough parent. I wondered if I too had made my kids feel as though they were not good enough by my tendency to expect perfection from myself and others. I think my most apparent self doubt label is that I often feel "unlikeable" and yes, I still struggle with this label and often find situations and examples mostly in the workplace to confirm this self doubt.
Overall I'm a good mom but I ruminate over a couple of mistakes I made years ago. My daughter has moved past it, I have not. It feels like I have these dark spots at the core of who I am and if people knew about them it wouldn't matter what I've done well, they would know that I am a fraud.
I doubt myself every day I am a true perfectionist, I have been this way forever and I will continue to struggle. But I will make it!!
We are constantly being bombarded with double messages and doubts so we'll buy more and more to make us 'perfect' as our parents before us bought into it.
No one is perfect, everyone fails at something. No one likes everyone. No one gets it right all the time or is loved all the time. If only our culture was honest instead of trying to 'rob us' blind to fit corporate America's government agendas we'd all feel a lot better about our selves that includes not dieting because you're 5, 10, 20 pounds overweight then putting on another 50 pounds because of the restriction. Good topics.
the answer to self doubt is self love...and not in overeating.
I doubt myself in so many ways- I feel I've screwed up life so many times that I am stuck in doubt that I can make positive and successful changes. I am afraid of making changes for fear I will fall flat on my face again. My mind goes through all the possible horrible outcomes my decisions might have. I really needed to read this today, because it's helping me to see that the only way out of this eating pattern is to start making changes- to address the real reasons I eat.
the bible says, "sow to yourself in righteousness, and reap in mercy---there's more but it's a good idea to love yourself in the " right" way.
I waited until I was 40 for my mother to say she loved me, all my life I was the fat daughter and my sister was the pretty skinny one, my father abused me at 13 and all my life I have had bad relationships, today the self doubt rears its ugly head again when on mothers day, only 1 of my 4 kids came to see me, again I feel that I have failed and so it goes on......when will I be able to forgive myself and be happy, I am nearly 60 years old.......thank you for the opportunity to talk
this is it for me. i doubt myself into oblivion and then find myself needy and helpless because i don’t trust that i can get myself out of a dark situation on my own account. i am not sure when i started doubting myself or what "label" it comes from. i think it is because when i was younger i did drugs and was not as "perfect" as my siblings who are always punctual, cheery, and in shape. it aggravates me just to think that i have never seen either of my siblings show negative emotions. i screwed around as a teenager probably to rebel against the image of perfection that i have always felt was necessary to belong in my family. then two years ago i had cancer. i had to move back home and everyone was lovingly-ish focused on me. in order to live up to their focus i lost myself and moved toward their ideal image of me. in order to justify their concern and emotional investment i felt i needed to become perfect. i did survive cancer wohoo! but changed my entire life to fit their ideas and aspirations for me. no wonder i am not happy in my current life situation! and i still have that perfection part following me. in order to be a part of my family, who are the people that supported me while i was sick,i feel like i need to be perfect. it kills me. i kill me. all while knowing exactly how important and fragile life is. but the good new is- i didnt realize any of this before i began typing and as i frantically write this i feel pounds heavier and much more wise.......thanks Dr. Gould and the SY blog. insight will release us.
the word "fraud" and that resonated in me instantly. I am constantly doubting that I have the right to be where I am - career-wise in particular. I look around me and assume that my colleagues are all so much smarter than me, and better than me in what we do. Years of being told by my mother, in fits of rage, that I was stupid, no good, won't amount to anything sank in. They had to. I had no one telling me otherwise. What alarms me is that I can "know" these things, yet not change them ... yet.
The other statements so touch home with me as does this blog - it made me cry to think that since I was a child I have been full of perfectionist tendencies and south doubt/loathing. I see myself as dumb, ugly, fat and a pig. Yet I am much like the woman in the blog. I am 47 years old! Yet the imagery remains. I struggle constantly with realizing I don't have to do everything 'perfectly' I was a straight 'A' student despite a job, family, volunteering yet still felt that way - stuffed it over with food to stop the hurt and for the last 10 years have been trying to figure out how it all fits. I am better now - so much better! Yet still there is this small child hiding inside crying because someone called her a cootie bug, and she thought it was true. Thank you Dr. Gould. I needed this more than I needed a diet!
Am I bad person, but it makes me feel better knowing what are other people doubts? Obviously, I have plenty of self doubts myself, but main one is whether I am lovable. Since childhood I never had anyone expressing that they care about me. They all did, but in their own way, it has rarely been simple "How are you?". As long as I was fed, I was meant to be ok. Therefore, simple caring scares me, I remember I got really panicky once, when I felt someone honestly caring about HOW I AM. I guess that's why I always doubt, whether I'm worth loving, especially by opposite sex. I fancy someone and then I find millions of reasons, why I'm not good enough: too fat, too boring, too serious etc. Or if things start moving forward, I find reasons to convince myself, that he doesn't really like me that much and there is no point of continuing as it's going to hurt much more later on. Then I end up feeling lonely and still longing to be loved. I try to convince myself that I'm wrong, but I still have that horrible feeling inside me. I'm simply lost.
I believe Jesus has forgiven me because He forgives so many others who have done so much more than I have. But can I find a Christian man who, being human and imperfect, will ignore my past and focus on the caring, loving, sympathetic Christian that others say I am today and who I don't believe!??? If I can't, then I am doomed to live my life alone or settle for somebody who isn't good enough for me, thus ensuring a life of unhappiness. How to erase my parents' tapes in my mind? The taunts of mean kids growing up? Mistakes I made due to being raised wrong, critically, and abused? Why do I always blame myself for everything when I was a child and not even able to defend myself or control my situation? Shouldn't I think myself fantastic just because I survived it all?!?!?!?! Where is the most self-doubt located: in "Me The Adult" OR "Me The Child"???? If I heal the child, will the adult be healed also? I have a great therapist, but the more I discover, the more I hurt sometimes! But I am staying away from the food with the help of my church.
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POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 12:18:51 AM | 4 COMMENTS
FRIDAY, MAY 07, 2010
It's doubt that makes you eat too much
In the last few blogs I ‘ve tried to illustrate the various major themes underlying the emotional eating pattern, which as you know, I believe is the biggest single cause of obesity. We looked at how marriage makes you eat, then how defiance and rebellion makes you eat. Today I want to write about how doubt makes you eat.
Of course none of these actually MAKE you eat. Instead, each of them tempt you to respond by eating because each in their own way make you feel temporarily powerless. And Overeating temporarily relieves you of that awful feeling.
The doubt I am talking about is not doubt about whether something is true or not. It is not doubt about another person’s motives or interests. It is not doubt about how the world works or whether god exists. It’s doubt about your own self worth.
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What is it we doubt about ourselves?
We doubt whether we are good enough; whether we are a fake or not; whether we love enough; whether we are smart enough, or pretty enough, or strong enough, or perfect, or talented, or ambitious enough; or kind enough, or too jealous or too competitive, or not a good enough daughter or sister. There is no end to this list.
When we doubt ourselves, we are measuring ourselves, and comparing ourselves to some standard. The standard we use is the critical factor that divides self doubt into two halves. One half is good useful doubt. The other half is destructive and corrosive self doubt. Good doubt does not make you eat. Destructive doubt makes you eat because, if you are an emotional eater, you don’t know any other way to get away from its hold on you.
Good doubt is helpful because the standard that is used is based in reality. It is time limited, temporary and reasonable. It serves a good purpose. It’s okay to watch and measure yourself as a serious student, or a good enough mother or a kind enough person. We all have strengths and weaknesses, and becoming better at something by recognizing you could do more or put in more effort is a healthy way to approach life. Measuring your weaknesses or weak commitments to certain goals and making changes you decide are right for you is a process that takes place in real life. It takes place over time, allows for lapses and sprints, time outs for leisure and fun, the right to change your mind and shift interests, and all the other things that most human beings do as they figure out how to spend their time and energy in life. Good doubt is an essential part of ongoing intelligent decision making.
Bad doubt is exactly the opposite. It is anchored in some station inside your mind that is disconnected from the processes of daily life. Perfectionism captures the essence of the bad doubt that makes you eat. Since it’s impossible to be human and be perfect, perfectionism is an impossible standard to meet. That’s why bad self doubt is so corrosive. It is endless.
In fact, you could almost say that once you have established a deep self doubt based on impossible rigid standards disconnected from reality, that you grow this self doubt every day, and unwittingly strengthen the self doubting, self accusatory part of yourself.
I once treated a woman who had been repeatedly told she was stupid by her father. She was telling me about how she became an accountant, and how that proved to her that she was really stupid. She took night school classes and graduated at the top of her class despite the fact that she was 40 years old, raising a child, working full time in a clerical position, and English was her second language.
I asked her how that success story was evidence that she was stupid? Well, she said, “I am hard of hearing so I had to sit in the front row but I didn’t hear everything the teacher was saying so I may have missed things.” I was stunned. She overcame even another hardship which only further demonstrated her native intelligence and she turned it into false evidence to fit the label her father gave her 35 years before. If she wasn’t perfect, i.e. knew everything the teacher said, then she must be stupid.
If you already have the emotional eating habit, you will have to feed yourself plenty of food to suffocate or stuff down that self doubting, self accusatory voice you hear in your head.
When you eat like that to push away your self doubt, you create a new self doubt to add to the pile. You doubt your will power or your resolve to control your weight. You accuse yourself of all kinds of character defects when the compulsion to drown out one self doubt becomes the next layer of, and evidence for, the self doubt related to your eating and your weight.
This will cascade until you find relief in a new and better way to understand and resolve what is happening to you. I continue to be amazed on how hard we are on ourselves and how painful that is, and how absolutely unnecessary it is. That’s why we spend so much time in the Shrink Yourself program on helping you work on, and work out, your old self doubts.
If you decide to comment on today’s blog, please share with others the self doubt label you acquired sometime in your life, and whether you have mastered it or are still struggling with it.
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 1:14:16 PM | 20 COMMENTS
FRIDAY, APRIL 30, 2010
EMOTIONAL EATING; SCIENCE AND MYSTERY
There is a science about emotional eating and there is a mystery. I have been studying this phenomenon for over 10 years and I continue to find new places to explore.
It's a science because we know that emotional eating is the major cause of weight gain, what emotional eating is, how the mind works to produce emotional eating, and how to correct it. It's a mystery because the act of eating, and the meaning of food and hunger, is part of the psychology of a person’s unique life, current and past.
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Here is one very common example. Many members of ShrinkYourself report graphically about that part of themselves that they know is rebellious when it comes to eating. “ I say I’m not going to eat this and just wait for that rebellious part of me to click in and make me eat.”
They describe their rebellious self in great detail. They don’t just describe, they glorify this part of themself. In a funny way they are proud of it. It’s their stake in the ground, a defiant piece of independence, a statement about who they are at their strongest and most immovable. Hundreds of times I ‘ve heard people say in their most undefended moments, “nobody’s going to take my food away from me.”
No matter how many times I have seen this I still think it is a bit of a mystery. The someone who wants to take food away from you is you. When you decide to take our program or to diet you are saying you want to learn how to eat in moderation and stop using food in excess to deal with emotions. You want to stop the self destructive use of food which is making you miserable and heavy, damaging your life and destroying your health. You are the one who decided to stop this eating pattern because it's in your best interest.
So who are you rebelling against? It’s obvious you are rebelling against yourself. But why would anybody do that? Either you want to control your weight or you don't want to control your weight . The worst position is being stuck between the two, alternating between the two choices, and the two wardrobes.
That's where almost every single member of the ShrinkYourself community starts. They start with an unresolved conflict with themselves. They have to recognize that there are two selves fighting it out with each other with every single food decision.
If we look a little deeper it is clear that one of the selves is rational and lives in the world of today. She wants to lose weight to take care of herself. The other self is the rebellious self that was born somewhere in the past, is outdated, and by all the laws of rationality should not have any voice at all in the present, much less total control.
When I ask members or patients about this rebellious self they often tell me about their personal history. The origin is almost always a rebellion against a parent, most often their mother. They vividly remember their mother constantly harping about their weight during late childhood and adolescence. They did not see their mothers attention to their weight as a loving gesture. Usually they saw it as a rejecting gesture meaning that they were not valued if they were heavy and would only be valued if they were thin and popular.
In response to that interpretation of their mother's intent, they dug in their heels and rebelled and refused to lose weight. Oftentimes they would sneak food to baffle their doctors and confuse their parents who couldn’t understand how they gained weight on the prescribed diet. Since they were ostensibly doing everything possible they should be excused from losing weight because it wasn't in their control, it was just their metabolism. They convinced themselves that they were victims being misunderstood and unfairly treated.
Before we go any further I want to be sure you understand that this is just one of the many origins of the rebellious self. There are many others. Some that started later in life. Some that have nothing to do with a parents obsession with their weight. But more of the origin in future blogs. The present is most important and regardless of the origin, the fact of rebelling against yourself is still a mystery.
But think about this mother-daughter scenario for a moment. This was a relationship that took place decades in the past, sometimes as many as four decades in the past. Oftentimes the mother is no longer alive. And although this may be an accurate description of the psychodynamics of what happened, there is no reason to continue an old battle. It is now a meaningless gesture in the present moment.
What does one do about a conflict like this? It is real,it is palpable, but it takes place in the depths of this information organ called the brain/mind.
Now for the science of insight. It's only insight over time that will help you resolve this conflict.
In last week's blog, I described a woman who conquered her rebellious self. She calmly and clearly decided that she was simply going to lose weight once she was convinced she could master the problems in her relationship without using food to comfort herself or to punish her husband ( insight level number 5, see previous blog). This did not just happen magically. It was the end of a process during which she was immersed in hours and hours of thinking about herself and food and grabbing little insights along the way until it all added up. I also mentioned that this happens very frequently in the Shrink Yourself program for people who spontaneously report that they have suddenly lost their cravings. That's the way the brain works. The brain has multiple processing centers that work individually and every night when you go to sleep your brain works very hard to synthesize what you have learned in these multiple centers. Every morning when you wake up you're a little bit wiser.
We've taken advantage of this in the Shrink Yourself program. We keep you immersed in thinking about emotional eating and your life for 12 weeks through multiple approaches and features so that you can collect hundreds of little insights, sleep on them every night, and let your brain finish the work. All significant learning takes a great deal of time, attention and practice. It's often reported that professional athletes have to spend 10,000 hours of practice before they reached the threshold of professionalism. That means throwing a lot of basketballs and hitting a lot of baseballs and running a lot of sprints.
So although the emotional eating issue is complex and the rebellion against yourself very personal, there is a scientific method that can deal with that complexity if you are willing to learn.
In future blogs I will describe other mysteries that you can think about, sleep on, and let your brain digest to make you a bit wiser the next day.
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 2:15:23 PM | 10 COMMENTS
FRIDAY, APRIL 23, 2010
FULL FROM THE INSIDE
I was talking to a patient today who had been struggling with her weight for decades. She had come to see me about other issues, but as we continued to work together the issue of weight and the rest of her life were so closely woven together that we couldn’t talk for very long about one without the other.
Today she was a different person. She was calm, self assured, and spoke more slowly with a greater sense of deliberation and self awareness than I have ever seen, or that she herself ever remembers.
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She had crossed a mental threshold and made the mantra we often use in the Shrink Yourself program come to life once again. She was thinking instead of eating. She had incorporated the pause exercise into her moment to moment style of living. She had integrated what she struggled to learn into who she had become. She was being her “best self”, the one with confidence in her own mind as her best friend, that replaced food as her best friend.
I have been around long enough to know this won’t last forever in this pure form. But I also know that once she has made it here, she won’t lose it, and will always be able to come back to it.
What happened, I asked. “ I decided to lose weight. It just happened, and I have not been hungry since then, and I have already lost 4 pounds.”
That’s right, I said. That is the way it happens. All the exercises and thinking work that lead up to this are processed by your brain, and suddenly a new way of looking at food emerges. It seems like magic, but it is not. It is the way the brain learns, and new habits are formed.
Hundreds of Shrink Yourself members have reported this very same experience…suddenly the hunger is gone and their best self emerges.
“I started cleaning my closet and giving away the clothes I would never wear and plan to buy clothes that fit after I lose all the weight I want to lose.”
I can’t tell you how many times I hear the story about the closet. It seems to be what people do as the final step of coming to reality about food in their life.
You look in your closet everyday, and there is the history of your weight fluctuations. Everyday you have to decide what you can wear, what to save in case, and what you hope to wear. The closet is a projection screen for your ambivalence about losing weight, and your fears about never being in control. When you clean out the closet by making decisions about what to discard, it represents your intentions and shows the strength of your conviction to change.
The contrast between the anxious food seeking diet obsessed person and the calm person was so striking, she had to ask herself, ”what have I been doing to myself all these years? “
The answer is too long and complex to elaborate here in the detail it deserves, but let me tell you the principle at work in her, and so many other patients I have treated.
Overeating and starving cycles (being fat or thin), represent the larger struggle of being your own person who is in control of your life and your body; or being your parent’s child who is supposed to be either fat or thin.
We all stay tied to the illusion of being loved and cared for forever (the illusion of safety) by staying connected, one way or another, to our family past. Food and fat is one way to stay connected to the past. We do this well into the adult part of the lifecycle, and slowly let go of this illusion in favor of owning and controlling our life and body by dealing with reality rather than illusion.
When you finally make the “decision” to be in control of your weight, you have made the decision to be an adult who owns her own body and can live fully in reality without using food to connect to the distant past. You have given up the illusion of being protected and safe in some magical way. Instead you have learned to value and rely on your own mature mind to provide real safety by solving problems in daily life.
That’s when you become calm and full from the inside. So full, you don’t need food to fill you up from the outside.
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 7:13:24 AM | 5 COMMENTS
FRIDAY, APRIL 16, 2010
Stuck, Part Two, My Marriage Makes Me Eat
My last blog about emotional eating and being stuck elicited many very interesting comments, so today I would like to use those comments to illustrate some important points about emotional eating. The common theme of four of the commentators was that the frustrations of their marriage was the cause their emotional eating.
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Manxiety said it quite clearly:
This is a light bulb moment. Unfortunately I can't see how to redress emotional problems that are causing the emotional eating. Been married for 44 years and it's OK but not emotionally nourishing. Husband too dominant - I'm too passive. Tried marriage counselling, but in the end have just settled for being content with what I have and making the best of it. Divorce would be too drastic and cruel for all concerned.
I would say to Manxiety:
You have a strategy for adapting to your reality. You have made the important decision of staying in your marriage. But you have not yet settled for being content and if you are still eating to quell your frustrations, you have not accepted your own advice…making the best of it. These are not emotional problems, these are decisions about coping with reality. You haven’t finished your work and your emotional eating is the sign that you a little bit more work to do about your passivity, and possibly more along the lines of the next commentaror, Mrs Kitty.
Mrs Kitty said:
I sympathize with your situation! I, too, am married but eat because I am left out of activities as well as the loop with my husband and stepson. At 50, I hate to start all over again yet, he's a good provider, just unable to comprehend how I am so lonely. I stuffed myself every time they left me home alone while they went out and had fun. Finally, I realized because I had God, I was NEVER alone and focus on Him now instead of punishing/consoling myself with food. You have love inside you that needs to be given. If you choose to stay in the relationship, join/become active in church, help with a charity, walk dogs or pet cats at your local shelter, take up painting or poetry. Let your energy and talents out into the world to be appreciated by many instead of keeping them at home where they are underappreciated by one! We're cheering you on!
I would say to Mrs. Kitty:
That’s the right attitude. If you are lonely, you can find many more things to do with your time and readiness to connect to people than waiting in frustration to be filled up by your husband, or your husband substitute…stuffed in food.
shirley61 said:
I can relate to this article, I have been married for 36 years but we do have a lot in common. That has never been a problem. He has more energy than I do sometimes and he doesn't know how to relax. So I get upset when he wants to go go go and I want to relax and read or exercise. I have some medical issues and one thing I have to do is exercise. So I turn to eating when I get frustrated. He is a very busy person with his job and he also works in our home. So his job is always facing him at home. So to keep me company I eat. I just started this program in March/2010 and I can already see how I am stuffing my emotions. I also worry about him so that makes me want to eat. We do have outside interests of boating, skiing etc. We are also in a situation of caring for my dad who is 92 and his mom who is 83. His mom lives 5 hours away and my day lives in Florida. We are both from Canada. We have alot on our plates but he seems to handle food better and stress better than me.
I would say to Shirley 61:
That eating to keep yourself company is one of the worst ways to deal with the frustrations of loneliness, and the differences in style and temperament between you and your husband. The frustrations of your marriage are challenges to deal with creatively in the realm of reality. Eating to keep yourself company is creating false comfort in the confining world of inner reality where no creative solutions can occur. In this area of your life you have to live in the world around you, not inside you.
jstango said:
When I was divorced, the weight fell off. I grieved but I did it out loud - no reason to eat to hide it. I'm married again this time husband not abusive but I am choosing to impose some of the same mental limitations I had in my first marriage. Our relationship is not perfect, he hates to talk, we struggle to communicate but I, like the rest of you, know there is no perfect relationship out there. I need to figure out how to live out loud even when I am a wife.
I would say to jstango:
Thank you for illustrating the one major point I had hoped to make. Yes there are frustrations in marriage, and in life, and they are inevitable. A successful life means you creatively adapt to your reality, and turn every frustration into what it is, a challenge to be dealt with. But when it really comes down to the final act of adapting and coming to peace with frustrations, it is something about yourself that you have to change. And it’s almost always a piece of personal development, some unfinished piece of work left over from your childhood. For you it is figuring out how to “live out loud”. For Manxiety is was how to stop being “too passive.” For Shirly 61 and MrsKitty it was taking responsibility of staying connected to people without waiting for one person to fill you up.
Thank you all for your comments. More next week.
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 6:55:46 AM | 13 COMMENTS
FRIDAY, APRIL 09, 2010
The Link Between Being Stuck and Losing Weight
Ninety-five percent of dieters gain their weight back. This discouraging statistic prompted the beginning of a group called the National Weight Control Registry. They became interested in determining what brought success to that 5% of people who are able to lose weight and keep it off. What they've found was that the people that kept the weight off didn't just change their eating patterns, they changed their life in some way.
Perhaps you know someone who has lost weight and kept it off. When you inquired into how they succeed you might have heard them say something like this:
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I was going through menopause and didn't want to go into the next part of my life as a heavy person.
I was ready to start having fun in my life.
It was time to get my career into high gear.
I was going through a divorce.
It's time to stop being so afraid of rejection.
I lost someone dear to me and realized it was time to take care of myself.
I was ready to own my own sexuality.
The place where they were stuck wasn't just related to their weight, it was related to some aspect of their life. When you are stuck you’re emotionally hungry. The people who have dieted successfully got fed up with being emotionally hungry. By dealing with the underlying issues that fueled their emotional hunger they were able to turn off their hunger switch. Their physical hunger became manageable and they were able to adhere to a sensible eating plan and lose weight, and keep it off with no dieting. This didn't happen all at once. They had to learn how to turn off their emotional hunger switch. They had to contend with the reality that it wasn't just that they felt emotionally hungry. It was that they felt powerless to do anything about their emotional hunger. They didn't believe that they could effect any change in the parts of their lives that were unsatisfying. They had to prove to themselves that wasn't true, that they weren't powerless.
In an Internet study we conducted last year with 7500 people we determined that there is a strong relationship between being overweight and feeling stuck. For roughly two thirds of serious dieters, going on a diet was part of their attempt to do something positive about their life. A way to get unstuck, so to speak.
If you feel stuck in life, you are not alone. 28 million people in this country are on antidepressants. Most of them are on medication for sub-clinical depression which means they're not mentally ill, they are dissatisfied with their life. What are the areas where you feel stuck in your life?
Being stuck is like having one foot on the gas pedal and another on the break. Your foot is on the gas pedal because you desperately want to go somewhere, that's somewhere in the future where it feels like your life will to be on track. Your foot is on the break because you're afraid.
Emotional hunger is there to indicate where you need to make a change. When a person eats because emotional hunger is too uncomfortable they disable their body’s internal guidance system. They no longer have an inner compass leading them toward the things they want or leading them away from the things they don't want. Once this happens they are more likely to stay stuck. For example one of our online users has a husband who works nights. He was home for the first night in awhile and was watching baseball. She felt emotionally hungry. Her hunger switch got turned on and she felt like she wanted to go to the fridge and binge. But she stopped herself and paused. She thought I could say something stupid like, “you never spent any time with me.” But she didn't. She thought things through. She realized what feeling was fueling her emotional hunger and instead she said, “I miss you. “ Her husband turned off the TV. She was able to get unstuck in her relationship with her husband by being honest with her feelings. When she did that she could see that even if she ate everything in the fridge it couldn't have filled the space of wanting to connect with her husband.
Be honest with yourself. Are you ready to get unstuck? Take your foot off the brake and you will begin to go forward. Once you're moving you can steer yourself where you want to go. The way to take your foot off the brake is to break the emotional eating habit.
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 1:07:17 PM | 14 COMMENTS
FRIDAY, APRIL 02, 2010
How To Feed Insights To The Mind
I think I have established clearly in previous blogs that there is a known pathway to break the emotional eating habit. It requires you to march through 10 specific insight steps, one by one, until you convince yourself, by your own experience, that you can handle whatever is stirring in your mind without using food as a form of medication.
It's easy for me to describe each of the insights. It is probably clear to you what each means. But understanding them is not the same as putting them into practice.
So how do we help you convert an intellectual understanding of the insights you need to an actual real-life experience that can serve you well for the rest of your life?
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Think of it as a massive attitude change. If you are an emotional eater your working attitude is that food is a medication that is absolutely essential for your emotional equilibrium. The attitude change you want to arrive at is that food is simply food to be used for health and enjoyment.
Have you ever changed your attitude in a big way before?
Of course you have although you may not have thought about it in this way. There was a time when you worshipped your parents as gods who would protect you for a lifetime from all harm. You were totally dependent on them for your safety, which meant that you would never really have to take care of yourself. When you were eight or nine years old you thought that members of the opposite sex were weird creatures you could not imagine having babies with. Those are just two of the massive attitude changes that everybody goes through.
It’s hard to remember exactly how you felt before these attitude changes. The same will be true for your attitude toward emotional eating once you reach your goal. You will look back and hardly believe that you considered food, overeating, or binging as an essential way of maintaining your emotional equilibrium.
The technique we use to help move from an intellectual understanding of each of the ten insights into a life experience you can trust is simply to ask you to pause at the critical moment that you are feeling a strong urge to eat in response to an emotional stimuli. The pause gives you a moment to reflect. If you don't pause but simply respond to the urge there is no opportunity for insight because the thinking in your mind is shut down. The pause must take place in the midst of a strong urge in order to have a corrective experience that retrains your brain.
When you pause you will be in touch with what is being stirred up inside your mind. I can tell you that whatever it is you will be able to handle it. If you are an emotional eater you do not believe me. What you need is evidence that you can rely on. That can only come from your own experience.
What we do is we take you through the exercises in the Shrink Yourself program that allow you to gather your own evidence based on your own observations. You have to experience that you can handle whatever is coming up in your mind or in your life. You have to re-learn this is true many times before you will be confident enough in your new skills.
That's why the sequence of the 10 insights is important. You have to rebuild your confidence on a strong foundation. You have to prove to yourself that you have a strong, capable adult mind before you can let go of food as a safety valve.
So what is being stirred up in your mind that is so disturbing that you want to hide in food rather than understand and deal with the messages your brain wants to deliver to you?
The range of issues that can trigger an emotional eating episode is vast but most people have a limited and familiar personal list. That makes the task of learning how to cope with these things much more manageable.
Sometimes it's the feelings and thoughts that remind you of a difficult life problem that you don't want to face or have been facing but don't know what to do.
At other times it may be your perfectionism. There is a critic inside that can be harsh and persistent and you don't know how to effectively talk back to that part of yourself.
Sometimes it's not a problem or your critic but simply a feeling that is emotionally loaded because of your past life. Your sore spot might be that you're feeling misunderstood or unappreciated or overworked or being controlled by someone at work or at home. When those contemporary experiences ignite a painful relationship experience from the past, this threatens to flood you with confusion, and you turn to food to shut down your mind.
Whether it's a problem, your critic, or a sore spot, you can learn better ways of handling it than shutting down your mind with food.
That's the lesson that you have to totally absorb and integrate into your life experience in order to end emotional eating and control your weight.
There is no quick cure. Making a large attitude change requires time and effort. All we can offer you is a map of how to get there and exercises designed to help you have the critical experiences you need to get there as fast and as surely as possible.
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 1:11:23 PM | 3 COMMENTS
FRIDAY, MARCH 26, 2010
FEED THE MIND INSIGHTS INSTEAD OF FOOD
It is so painful to watch people struggle in their attempts to break the emotional eating habit. I wish I had a quick and easy solution like a pill or a mantra, or a simple just - do - this formula and everything will be okay. Everyone who suffers from this kind of addiction to food as relief or reward works hard to break it, but almost always fails no matter how hard they try because they are having the wrong conversation with themselves. They are talking to themselves about food, calories, programs, will power and self loathing when they binge or fail to lose weight. What they should be talking to themselves about is the problems in living they are avoiding or denying when they use food to close down their mind.
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The theme of these recent blog session is feeding your mind with food. That means you use food to interrupt your mental conversations with yourself because you are avoiding something, That means you will always eat too much because there is always something to worry about. If you would simply eat an apple a day’s worth of calories more than you need, you will gain twelve pounds a year.
That’s why all diets will eventually fail.
The question is how can I help you get from the wrong but familiar repetitive non-productive conversation you are having with yourself about your weight to the correct and productive conversation you must have with yourself in order to break the emotional eating mindset?
The answer is insight. Insight sounds vague, but it is the most powerful tool the mind has to work with. You have first hand knowledge of the power of insight. You’ve undoubtedly had flashes of insight that have shifted your attitude, changed your behavior and opened up new pathways as you go through the life cycle. Insights are what help us understand and interpret reality in a more accurate way. When we have the insight that we have misunderstood our spouse on an important matter, we can apologize and make some reparations for our error and avoid repeating it in the future. The meaning of what our spouse did or did not do is changed because of that insight when we recognize that he or she wasn’t thinking what we thought they were thinking.
The insights about weight control you need are those that help you correct the profound misunderstanding that inhabits your mind that food is not really food but a form of medication to be used to soothe and shut down the thinking mind.
If you follow my line of thinking, then we've established that the cure for weight control is a psychological cure, and the medicine we use for a psychological problem is insight. If we feed the mind the right insight instead of food, we can help you switch from the wrong conversation you are having with yourself to the right one. Then you can get off the yo-yo dieting merry go round and really take control.
In my last several blog postings I have struggled with this question of what are the right insights and how should they be sequences for the best result. There is an insight pathway from food controls me ( the starting point of all emotional eating); to the cure, food is only use food, to be enjoyed and used for essential healthy sustenance.
There are ten specific insights that have to be learned in sequence in order to reach that goal. Instead of repeating those ten here, click here.
These are the insights that are sprinkled throughout the Shrink Yourself program and my book Shrink Yourself. I think that the new clarity about this pathway will be immediately useful to you. I encourage you to identify where you are on this pathway.
Let me know if this helps as much as I think it will.
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 3:00:10 PM | 7 COMMENTS
FRIDAY, MARCH 19, 2010
FEEDING THE MIND: TEN INSIGHTS REQUIRED TO BREAK THE EMOTIONAL EATING HABIT
I’m going to continue talking about the stages one has to go through to be cured of the destructive emotional eating habit, and I will continue to use the comments to the last blog to illustrate what I have to say.
First, I want to remind you that the cure for emotional eating is a psychological cure, and the medicine we use to cure the mind is insight. As I outline the ten essential, and sequential, insights you need to be cured, I want to remind you of the major common sense principle one has to embrace first as the “truth”. If this is not accepted or acceptable, nothing else I have to say will be of any help. This is the only framework that I know that works. Here’s what I said last week:
Here is the ten step insight path from food controls me; to I control my life and my weight.
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- I start with the conviction that my urges are too strong — nothing will ever work. I will try again, but I am ready to quit at any time. But others have made this journey, maybe I can.
Sarah represents this starting point when she commented last week, "Your article certainly rings true with me. My problem is that if I want to eat then I must eat. I get massive cravings for crisps, buscuits, chocolates, sandwiches, alcohol, coffee, chips and I just can't say 'no', I know that this sounds like a joke but it isn't. If I get a craving for crisps or chocolate or anything then I will HAVE to have it there and then. There is no stopping me. I can't be shamed out of it. I will eat regardless of where I am or who is watching me. I have no shame but I loathe myself and hate myself and get annoyed at myself for it. Afterwards I beat myself up wondering why I can't stop myself and what is making me do it."
Many others have described their overpowering urges as if there was another person inside of them taking control, making them as powerless as Sarah describes. This is a real feeling, but if you open up your mind a bit, the insight that will help you is; maybe this other person inside of me is me, and it is knowable, not forever hidden from view.
- I need to eat the way I eat. Don't take it away from me prematurely. It’s too dangerous to learn more about why I need food to control my thoughts and emotions. I might understand what is happening and start moving out of my stuck position. But maybe that is good, not dangerous.
The mtn bike girl said, "I found this article very helpful. I’m starting week 3 and am realizing that I too have been using food to avoid difficult thoughts and feelings. However, as I write these things down, they don’t seem as insurmountable as I had thought they were. In total, they are pretty significant issues, but one at a time, they look manageable. I have been very hard on myself, blaming myself for not having any self-control but now I realize that the problems I’m struggling with are real. I’ve just been using ineffective coping strategies."
- Now I see clearly why I need food to control my emotions -- I'm willing to question these reasons and look for alternative ways of coping.
Ben said, "Thank you for the thought provoking article. I often use food to numb physical pain minor arthritis. Often I resort to food once Im tired of trying to address the cause of the pain or I begin to beleive that I'm stuck forever with it. However, the article has helped, if for nothing else, because it has reminded me again and made aware of my relationship to food. I know there are better ways to cope and maybe even a solution. Thank you."
- Maybe I am not so powerless in life that only food can comfort me.
Keri said, "Dear Dr.Gould, I was the second commentator in your last blog. I have read and re-read your comments as they have struck me hard. You are right about thinking itself not being painfulit is dealing with the thoughts and decisions that I might have to make. I am stuck at the stage of binge eating to numb the pain of possible changes in my life. The indecision and procrastination and the feeling that I will never get what I might need or want are keeping me fat and miserable.what a sorry state to be in. I must try to deal with this.thank you."
- I am confident I can pause and then think instead of eat, but then I need help dealing with my problems.
This is where we want you to be at the end of the first four weeks of Shrink Yourself. You can’t be here 24 hours a day, but at least most of the time. When you are here, then the next four weeks of the program will work, and you could benefit immensely by looking at our companion program, My Virtual Shrink, because it focuses totally and comprehensively on problems in living and helps you answer the three most important questions:
The next five insights are relatively easy to learn compared to these first five. It takes concentration and effort, but you are on the downslope after you have done the arduous climb up the first five insights. When you are here, you are already in control, and not so afraid to face the challenges of your life or your feelings because you have been reconnected with the most intelligent part of your mind again. You are absolutely certain there is no other overpowering presence in your mind that makes you eat too much.
- I'm learning how to face and solve my problems without using food as a safety net.
Liz said, "Great articles. I am a life long dieter and have hit an uncomfortable high weight again! I am emotionally mature enough at the age of 30 to realize I am past step one and am working on using my mind, to stay present, to think through the problems that come my way. I'm looking forward to see what comes next."
- I am now strong enough in my ability to face problems that I can face my inner critic as well as those in my life that trigger this critic.
Margaret said, "What struck me is our connectedness of emotions, thoughts and body. When I first read your comment that eating soothes the pain of our thoughts, my first reaction was a defensive "no." But as I considered what really happens inside of me, I realized eating does not soothe the pain of my feelings but it drowns out the noise of my critical and negative voice inside of me...It was an 'aha' moment-- so thank you! Understanding that my way of operating was to make food choices, then my inner voice berates me. This is the space where my inner pain comes from, not from the food itself, not from my choices, but from what I say about those choices. This awareness has potential for some self- healing I do believe."
- I am so good at facing my problems and my critic I don't need food to help me avoid or deny reality.
- I'm so strong now I can look at the deeper reasons I may have sabotaged myself in the past.
- I am so confident in my new skills and perspective that a bad food day doesn't scare me. It's just an opportunity to understand what is being stirred up inside me.
WHEN YOU GET TO THE TENTH INSIGHT STEP YOU ARE CURED FOR LIFE.
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 4:19:58 PM | 6 COMMENTS
THURSDAY, MARCH 11, 2010
FEEDING FOOD TO THE MIND: STAGES ONE AND TWO
This is the second blog in the series about Feeding Your Mind with Food. I intended to write a different story today but the responses to the last blog were so informative that I thought it would be more enlightening to tell the story through those thirteen comments. This new story is about the stages one has to go through to break the emotional eating habit.
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The very first comment surprised me. She thought what I said was quite harsh, like a parent scolding her in some way. She said “it reminds me of my parents telling me off for overeating when I was little.” That was not my intention but I understand why she said that after reading the other comments and reflecting on what she said when she identified herself as someone just starting to deal with the emotional eating issue. It was too harsh for her at that early stage.
At the beginning stage, when there is just enough awareness to recognize there must be an emotional component to your weight problem, anything you learn that makes you think about it more deeply and personally, seems like an assault upon you. It feels like just one more person lecturing you, trying to talk you out of your eating habits by shame or logic or some other shenanigans. Someone who talks straight to you is just another insensitive and over controlling parent who doesn’t really care about you. This is especially true if the weight problem started early in life and was entangled in the family dynamics of that period. The sensitivity to what others say about your eating habits is at it’s highest.
The other 12 responses were from people in stages further along, and as luck with have it, the second response also represented the second stage. That person said “the description is so true. Eating does numb the mind and take away the pain of thinking.”
This statement represents an acceptance and understanding of the basic, and incontrovertible facts about emotional eating. Paraphrasing this blog theme, eating feeds the mind a numbing substance that takes away the pain of thinking.
If I could boil down what I said in the first blog, my book, and the ShrinkYourself program to its simplest set of incontrovertible facts, it would be the following. There is a reality. Life is complex. You have the intelligence to deal with it, and you must deal with it. You are better off dealing with reality by using the most intelligent part of your mind. Using food to numb the mind in order take away the pain of thinking means you are shutting off the most intelligent part of your mind, and that is almost always costly, and causes unnecessary pain and suffering.
The first commentator didn’t like that message. It was too harsh, I suspect, but of course do not know, because she still believes that she must continue to use food to shut off her thinking mind. If she didn’t do that, her emotions might overwhelm her. She was protecting herself from the same danger that others at a later stage in the journey of healing have clearly discovered and proved to themselves is simply not a real danger.
There are steps and stages on the journey to end out-of - control emotional eating. Everyone is an emotional eater to some degree, it is built into our upbringing. It’s the habitual or compulsive part of that pattern that is unhealthy, not the occasional indulgence.
So, if the first stage is, “I don’t want to hear this message about using my intelligence to deal with reality”, then the second stage is captured in the line of the second commentator who says, “food takes away the pain of thinking.” That caught my attention…”the pain of thinking.” I have always enjoyed the practice of psychiatry because of the sheer pleasure of sitting down with someone and helping them think clearly about what was bothering them. The thinking part was not painful for either me or my patients because it was productive and useful. Certainly there were painful things to confront and painful memories to deal with and over the years I bought a truckload of Kleenex, but the act of thinking itself was not painful.
If food is still considered as useful to dull the pain of thinking, then we have a way of describing the goal of the next stage in this healing process. In order to break free, you have to employ and enjoy the best parts of your intelligent mind, and that means, you have to start down that path by not being afraid to think about whatever is bothering you.
There are many more comments to the first post to discuss, and I will continue those next week, but let me illustrate this last point about being afraid to think about what is bothering you. One of the comments was about something that I have heard so many times before. A woman was wondering whether to be skinny means she will leave an unsatisfying relationship. Her weight goes up and down and she is afraid to become “skinny”. What that says to me is she is afraid to make up her mind, which means thinking through her dilemma, and coming to a decision, and being responsible for her decision. Instead she is in a gambling mode, waiting to see what card comes up for her. If she has a bad eating day, that means she is going to stay or at least that she is too afraid to leave. If she has a good eating day, that means she is going to leave the relationship. That is an unproductive way to make an important life course decision. It reflects her ambivalence, but it also keeps her stuck, because she can’t use the most intelligent part of her mind to either fix the relationship, or find a way to stay, or find a way to leave…all of which she is working on indirectly but in a fragmented way that leads no place.
That’s how life and eating and thinking, or not thinking, all work together on a daily basis if food is used to feed a dulling substance to the mind
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 2:44:48 PM | 12 COMMENTS
FRIDAY, MARCH 05, 2010
FEEDING THE MIND
I’m going to use this blog each week to tell, and retell, just one simple story, and that is how the mind feeds itself on food. Here’s the first version.
Once upon a time, a long time ago, a patient said to me, “You know, there are good food days and bad food days.” As usual, I asked the obvious question. “What’s the difference?”
“Well, on good food days, I know exactly what to eat, and I enjoy eating healthy. Not too much, but enough to feel satisfied, and I don’t feel guilty.”
And bad food days? “That’s when I don’t want to do that. I want my reward. I am too stressed out.”
So, you know how to eat healthy and you can enjoy it but some days you just don’t want to do it, and on those days you are feeding your mind, not your body. “Yes, I am feeding myself a drug.”
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That’s the beginning of everyone’s story who has trouble controlling their weight. On certain days you are convinced that you have to feed your mind, and you feel like you don’t have any choice about it (powerless), and in fact, you want to do it even though you know, quite well, you will beat yourself up for doing it within hours.
My patient actually had 30 good food days in a row before a bad day just appeared, for no apparent reason. For 30 days her husband of two decades was treating her surprisingly well and she thought that finally all the work they did together was paying off.
She didn't know why she was having a few bad food days. Everything was going so well, wasn't it? Yes, they were but she didn't want to see some early warning signs that his mood was changing. She wanted to stay in her bubble a little longer. Feeding her mind helped her do that.
Her bad eating days kept her preoccupied with food and guilt and kept her from seeing the pieces of reality that she did not want to deal with. Because she didn’t want to see the early warning signs of his mood change, she didn’t do what she needed to do to avoid a blowup, and when it came, she felt furious and betrayed. She paid a big price for her short-term reprieve from reality.
That’s the first version of how the mind feeds on food. When you want to deny or avoid an uncomfortable reality, you can temporarily shut down the most intelligent part of your mind, by feeding yourself food, and staying preoccupied with the guilt about eating too much. It works, but it costs a lot.
It took my patient quite a while to realize that her anger at being betrayed by his mood change should not be totally directed at him. She was the one who was trying to live inside the illusion that all the ups and downs in the relationship had magically gone away. She was the one who didn’t want to have to live with the complexity of human relationships. She was the one who might have managed the changing mood, if she would let herself acknowledge it, and might have avoided the blowup altogether.
If she didn’t dull her considerable intelligence by feeding her mind, her life would work a lot easier, and she wouldn’t have to store her anger in her fat cells.
That’s version one. As we go on you will see that feeding your mind with food serves many purposes and they all are very costly. Feed your body well. But when you feed your mind, it should be with rich thought, not with food.
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 7:43:03 AM | 17 COMMENTS
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 2010
Only Measure Meal by Meal
Are you always judging, critiquing or evaluating yourself? Do you feel like you can never measure up? Do you believe, especially when it comes to food (not to mention other things), you can never get it quite right? If so, you’re not alone.
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We are in report card season right now. My son brought home his mid-year report card last week. Maybe your kids did, too. There were pages and pages of information about how he’s doing in math and reading. Average here, advanced there. Notes about how he’s not always prepared with a pencil at chorus practice. Check minuses to indicate that he doesn’t always want to run the mile at Phys. Ed (who ever did?). And a letter from his teacher about how despite his ability to engage in mature conversations with adults, he sometimes “turns off” his peers. I had to then explain to my son what it means to “turn off” your peers. Not a well-received conversation as you might imagine.
Look, we live in a society where we’re being measured and weighed constantly from the minute we’re born. The first thing that people want to know after a baby is born is how much did he/she weigh. Then, the pediatrician tells us how we’re growing in comparison to other children. Our parents appoint one sibling the smart one, the other the pretty one. And after awhile we get so accustomed to being the subject of evaluation that we inevitably do this to ourselves all day long. “I did a great job on that phone call” or “I just blew it.” We pick up where our parents and teachers left off, measuring ourselves all day long. Liking ourselves when we meet the mark and disliking ourselves when we fall short.
Addictions like alcohol, nicotine or drugs are more black and white. You’re either on them or off them. Our black and white minds like this. It’s easy to measure if we’re doing a good job. Programs to break addictions recommend taking things one day at a time. But with food, it can be so much harder. Even one day at a time can seem like an eternity when a day means three meals and two snacks that you’ve got to get right. It’s no wonder that so many of us throw in the towel after eating something we wish we hadn’t. It’s because it’s just too hard. We’ve set the bar too high. We expect too much.
If you’re trying to overcome a pattern of overeating, you need to offer yourself more realistic expectations. The only way to measure how you’re doing is one meal at a time. Don’t try to beat yourself into submission. Don’t try to bully yourself into eating well for a whole day or a whole week. Simply tell yourself, in the most loving and gentle way, that you only need to make good choices for this meal that’s ahead of you. That makes things manageable. That gives you the chance to succeed. Accept that you’re not going to get it right. There is no perfect report card. And perfection is pretty boring. When you give yourself the chance to be perfectly imperfect, you don’t have to be measured, you just have to try your best for this meal that’s in front of you. And that is something that you CAN do.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 3:43:52 PM | 7 COMMENTS
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 2010
Self-Acceptance Starts Now!
Do you keep telling yourself that when you lose weight you’ll finally love yourself? Do you think it’s completely acceptable to reject your body in its current state? If you are plagued with thoughts about wishing you looked different, read on.
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A female journalist I know who has written beauty articles for Allure, Glamour and Cosmo said, “I always thought I was just one haircut away from being beautiful. If I could only find the “right” haircut, lipstick or mascara I’d be a different person.” We do the same thing with our weight. If I was just a size (fill in the blank), if I didn’t have cellulite, if I could only lose five, fifteen or fifty pounds I’d finally accept myself. But the goal becomes more and more elusive begging us to chase it to the point of exhaustion. And even if you do arrive, it often doesn’t give you the “good” feeling you were anticipating. That doesn’t mean that being fit and feeling pretty are not acceptable goals to have, it simply means that how you get there probably looks a lot different than you to believe.
I hate to be cynical but the beauty (and diet) industry thrives on you feeling badly about your body. When you’re at your most vulnerable, they’ve got you. You’ll buy anything they’re selling hoping that it’s going to make you feel better about yourself. It won’t. So, if all of that won’t help you feel better, what will? It starts with accepting yourself exactly as you are TODAY. Even if you have wrinkles and even if you have rolls.
It can be all too common to approach dieting and exercise from a place of self-hatred. It’s our negative feelings that propel us to “deprive” ourselves. It’s no wonder that we come to resent taking care of ourselves—we’ve made it into a form of punishment. However, when we accept ourselves, we’re more likely to have the energy required to take loving actions towards our bodies—actions like eating well and exercising. It may seem like semantics but the source of your approach matters.
If you’re wondering how this could be true, I’ll share a simple story with you about my son. We have a friend who always threw him on the bed. It was a big game and brought on fits of laughter. Another friend threw him on the bed once and he started wailing. He didn’t get hurt but he got scared. Instead of playful, this other person was aggressive (on the inside) which the friend later admitted. The action was the same, but not the intent, and that made all the difference.
This change of perspective can sound easier said than done but it is a necessary part of taking care of your body for the rest of your life. This is why dealing with your own self-doubts is a big part of both the Shrink Yourself book and the online program. Some simple ways that you can start accepting yourself now are:
1. Writing down three things you did well each night.
2. Asking your friends or family to share what they love about you.
3. Meditating on a quality that you possess that you love (joy, radiance, intelligence, fun, reliability) and letting that quality flow out of you more freely.
We have the false belief that if we can only change our thinking then we’ll finally be able to change our actions. But it happens in reverse. When we change our actions, our way of thinking inevitably changes. Take loving actions towards yourself and you’ll find yourself accepting yourself more and more. Anything from putting yourself to bed early, to drawing a bath for yourself, to setting a boundary with someone who always elicits bad feelings in you. You are not fifteen pounds from fabulous, you are already fabulous. Self-acceptance starts now!
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 2:04:54 PM | 9 COMMENTS
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2010
If Food Isn't Love, What Is?
Has food become a substitute for the real love, affection and passion you crave? Did you comfort yourself with food after a relationship ended or someone died? There is a quote from Song of Solomon in the Bible that says, “Comfort me with apples, for I am sick of love.” Since the beginning of time food has been a replacement for the disappointments that love can cause. We know that while food might work as a short-term quick fix, that it can never fill the hole that only love can. If food isn’t love, what is? Keep reading to find out.
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Using food as a substitute for love is so common that I have made it a yearly ritual to write about this phenomenon during Valentine’s week. Even the definition of love is overly simple and even confusing, “an intense feeling of deep affection” which might explain why figuring out what love is and having false substitutes for it are so common.
Many of us are hungry for love. Many of us are hungry for food. Many of us are hungry. Period. The two hungers can get collapsed into one another making them seem as though they are the same thing. One SY member eloquently wrote about this hunger by saying, “I have found that the desirous "monster" is not a monster at all. It's ME. It's my needs and wants and feelings and MUUUUUCH to my surprise, I'm NOT insatiable. I've ignored, denied, decried, sublimated, tabled, mocked, forgotten my needs so frequently that, like a crying baby, what might have been a little whimper has turned into a wail. And so of course I grab at the one thing, the one comfort, the one thing that's all my own: food. I have found, when I stop warring against my "monster" and start to address what it's asking for underneath the cries of food (Be kinder to me! I need a break! I can't take on this much!) the sense of deprivation is at first VERY BIG but there is a point of satiety. Even the most agitated baby won't cry forever if you comfort her long enough. And if you hold and comfort and feed and entertain and bathe and nurture and cherish that baby/baby/woman enough she'll trust you and won't need to act out to get your attention. It just takes time.
This reminds me of a quote by Pierre Reverdy, “There is no love; there are only proofs of love.” It’s not enough to love our selves or the people in our lives. We must communicate that love with loving actions and words. Just like the member above realized that she needed to be kinder to herself, give herself a break or take on less in order to stop relying on food so much, what are the ways in which you can demonstrate proofs of love to yourself and others?
A first step towards ending a pattern of using food as a substitute for love is to realize that overeating or “treating ourselves” is not an act of love but an act of aggression. This small shift in perspective can make us see that the way in which we were trying to soothe and comfort ourselves is actually counterproductive and hurtful. So, if food isn’t love, what is? Here are some quotes from a few of the greats:
"Attention is the most basic form of love; through it we bless and are blessed." - John Tarrant
This Valentine’s Day give your attention freely to yourself and others. Put down the computer, the remote, the phone, or the newspaper. Listen to your true feelings instead of feeding them.
"Loves makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place." - Zora Neale Hurston
This Valentine’s Day know yourself, share who you really are and take a risk to reveal yourself. Food keeps you in a hiding place.
“To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering one must not love. But then one suffers from not loving. Therefore to love is to suffer, not to love is to suffer. To suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love. To be happy then is to suffer. But suffering makes one unhappy. Therefore, to be unhappy one must love, or love to suffer, or suffer from too much happiness. I hope you're getting this down." Woody Allen
This Valentine’s Day lighten up, laugh it off, and let it go. No matter how confusing love or life might be, if seen through a certain lens, the whole thing can be pretty funny. Take some time to view things with humor. Food might numb the pain and tears, but it also numbs the joy and laughter.
"One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life: that word is love." – Sophocles
This Valentine’s Day, love. Whether your proof of love is taking yourself out for a walk, eating well, laughing it off, forgiving a slight, keeping a criticism to yourself, accepting yourself as you are, buying a book you’ve been wanting to read, being kinder, just do it. Have fun looking for ways to give proofs of love. Notice that the one word that frees us of all the weight and pain of life is not food, but love.
In simple and everyday ways, love. In big and tangible ways, love. In silly ways, love. Simply put, love…love…love.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 8:27:13 AM | 8 COMMENTS
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 04, 2010
Codependence Contributes to Overeating
Codependence is defined in many ways. A common definition is being overly focused on other people in a way that inhibits the quality of your life and your relationships. I’ve heard it called being O.P.P. (other people oriented). Another way to think of codependency is people-pleasing, or being a bobble head, saying yes without consideration of your own wants and needs. The concept was originated when mental health workers observed the partners of alcoholics and the ways in which they sacrificed their own health, happiness, and well-being because of someone else’s disease. As human works-in-progress, we are probably all a little bit co-dependent (heck, in our selfish society, some of us could even stand to be a little bit more O.P.P.) however, after working with overeaters for years I can assure you that some of the patterns of codependency contribute to overeating and this is what we’re going to look at today.
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Codependent’s Anonymous defines four patterns of co-dependency. They are denial, low self-esteem, compliance, and control (outlined below). For each one, I’m going to write how that particular pattern ties in to overeating. At the end I will give you some simple tools that you can use to combat codependency (and the overeating it can trigger).
Denial Patterns:
I have difficulty identifying what I am feeling.
I minimize, alter or deny how I truly feel.
I perceive myself as completely unselfish and dedicated to the well being of others.
Overeating:
When we’re disconnected from our feelings for too long, any feeling starts to be intolerable. Since food numbs feelings, a pattern of denial can contribute to overeating by insuring that you’ll be distanced from your true feelings. Food stops you from feeling and keeps you in a denial pattern.
Low Self Esteem Patterns:
I have difficulty making decisions.
I judge everything I think, say or do harshly, as never "good enough."
I am embarrassed to receive recognition and praise or gifts.
I do not ask others to meet my needs or desires.
I value others' approval of my thinking, feelings and behavior over my own.
I do not perceive myself as a lovable or worthwhile person.
Overeating:
When our true needs are not met, food can feel like a quick fix way to fill up. It is an overly simplified way of receiving. Using food in this way defers having to develop the skills to treat ourselves as worthy and lovable, and to trust that we can ask for what we want. Food stops you from sticking up for yourself, and keeps you in a low self-esteem pattern.
Compliance Patterns:
I compromise my own values and integrity to avoid rejection or others' anger.
I am very sensitive to how others are feeling and feel the same.
I am extremely loyal, remaining in harmful situations too long.
I value others' opinions and feelings more than my own and am afraid to express differing opinions and feelings of my own.
I put aside my own interests and hobbies in order to do what others want.
I accept sex when I want love.
Overeating:
Overeating is often a consolation prize for not getting the things we truly want in life. C’mon, if a genie came out of a bottle offering a wish, would you pick a brownie or true love, a cookie or a fulfilling career, a piece of pizza or peace of mind? The answer is clear. Every time we choose food instead of creating a life we love, we’re confirming that we’re not important therefore food keeps a compliance pattern going.
Control Patterns:
I believe most other people are incapable of taking care of themselves.
I attempt to convince others of what they "should" think and how they "truly" feel.
I become resentful when others will not let me help them.
I freely offer others advice and directions without being asked.
I lavish gifts and favors on those I care about.
I use sex to gain approval and acceptance.
I have to be "needed" in order to have a relationship with others.
Overeating:
We are worthy of love. Period. We don’t have to do anything to get love. We don’t have to make ourselves indispensable. We just have to be. This simple realization can stop you from busying yourself with everyone else’s needs. And when you do you might have the time to eat well and exercise.
Feelings, our feelings, are important guideposts. If we shut the door on them, whether by being overly focused on others or by overeating, our compass gets stuck. Shrink Yourself helps you to feel again (without fear). Here are some simple ways to start breaking a pattern of codependency and the overeating that it can cause.
1. Use “I” statements. It can be so difficult to own our own feelings. “I feel lonely” instead of “you never spend time with me during football season.”
2. Practice making simple requests. “Can I have a kiss during the commercial break?” instead of “Be more affectionate.”
3. Do a Temperature Check – Check in with yourself. Stop to see how you're feeling in both body, and mind. Use that temperature check to help you use “I” statements and make simple requests (or simply to get some rest when you need it).
Melody Beattie, the Queen of Codependency says, “recovery can be fun.” It can be wonderful to discover who you are and what you really feel, independent of other people.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 10:34:36 PM | 13 COMMENTS
THURSDAY, JANUARY 28, 2010
3 Ways to Trust Yourself Enough to Lose the Weight
Have your past weight loss failures left you feeling like you’ll never succeed? Have experiences with dieting contributed to your loss of faith or confidence in yourself? Do you feel defeated? Most dieters have feelings of failure that lead to lower self-esteem. Here are three ways to regain your trust in yourself.
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After years of picking up my son at school he undeniably expects me to be there when he steps out of class. Granted, picking up your child on a regular basis is a lot easier (for most of us) than eating what we say we will. Simply put: trust develops when people do what they say they are going to do. Diets set you up to mistrust yourself because you expect that to succeed you must do things perfectly without any margin for error. This is simply impossible. To regain trust follow these three steps.
1. Stop Dieting
This might sound especially difficult to do. Dieting can become an obsession—the never-ending search for the magic quick fix cure. Many of us hold the false belief that without a diet we will gain more weight than ever before. This isn’t true. In fact, most people that gain weight over the years do it after a diet ends. The end of each diet packs on the weight that was lost, plus a little bit more. The other problem with diets is that they give you the false belief that you only have to do them temporarily. That’s a misconception. To lose weight and keep it off for life you must change your lifestyle, not for two weeks, not for two months, not till you lose the weight, but forever. Until we accept this, we will waffle, yo-yo, and continue to start something we have no intention of finishing. And that’s where the trust erodes. So, stop dieting, start creating lifelong change and try Shrink Yourself for 14 Days to help you do that.
2. Grounded
The logical question after giving up dieting is, “What now?” If you’ve dieted for nearly a lifetime, it can be disorienting to entertain the notion of giving it up. But the fact is by now you probably know what to eat. So, simply face each meal, one food choice at a time. To do this, and to do it well you need to stay grounded, to stay in your body. In today’s world this can be very difficult. We are sped up. We are disengaged. We are distracted. Before eating, slow down, breathe, feel your feet on the floor, your butt in the chair. All of this will bring you into the present moment where you get to choose what, and how much you eat. If you’re not grounded, you’re likely to eat mindlessly. When you’re mindless, you’re simply not there, and if you’re not there how can you make a conscious decision. Staying grounded will also help with emotional eating. If you’re present you can tell someone when they’re hurting your feelings instead of sucking it up, and then needing to pacify the feeling later with food. Practice being present in all areas of your life. You can only trust yourself if you’re there.
3. It Takes Time
Trust takes time to build. The more you make new, and different choices, the more you will believe you can. A marathon runner starts out running to the mailbox. The next week, she or he might make it to the corner. And soon enough they’re running a mile. And finally they’re running 26.2. miles all in one day. What starts off as unfathomable becomes doable, but only with time. The runner trusts that they can do it because they prove to themselves that they can. You have to prove to yourself that you can do this. You can eat sensibly without the restrictions of a diet. You can stick up for yourself. You can exercise regularly. Each choice you make builds trust, and with trust, the choices get easier.
4. The Process is as Important as the End Result
Something is changing in our world. Many people have reported that they’ve spent so much of their recent years rushing to get somewhere only to realize that precious moments were squandered along the day. If you’re reading this, one of the end results you probably want is weight loss, and that’s okay. However, each time you make a better food choice, each time you put on your sneakers even when you don’t want to, each time you choose to deal with life’s challenges without using food to numb yourself, you change. It’s these choices that make you grow, evolve, and mature. Sure, the end result might be weight loss but each moment provides you with a chance to know yourself better, to treat yourself more kindly, and to trust yourself for doing what you say you will do.
The end result of all this will be losing weight. That will be terrific but the process of becoming the kind of trustworthy person who can make those kinds of choices will be sublime. Don’t miss it by focusing solely on the finish line.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 11:14:46 PM | 8 COMMENTS
FRIDAY, JANUARY 22, 2010
How to Warm Up Without Food
It’s been freezing in most parts of the country. And even in sunny California it’s been non-stop rain and cold. These are the kinds of days that make us want to nest at home with a big pot of comforting food. If you don’t want the weather to affect your weight, you’ll have to discover ways to get warmth and comfort without food. Keep reading to find out how.
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“Baby, it’s cold outside,” I can hear the words of the song in my head. While it might seem natural to cook up something fattening and delicious and just sit inside to get through these cold days, think again. There are other ways to get warm.
HOT BEVERAGES – Don’t underestimate the comfort of tea. I simply like the feeling of holding a cup of hot water in my hands. Somehow, it dials stress down. You can have fun finding a favorite tea that doesn’t require cream and sugar to be delicious. You can try a cup of hot water with lemon that helps to cleanse and detoxify your body. You can even just drink hot water (I like half boiling water and half room temperature water). My friend and I call it a half and half (and it’s a lot less fattening than the real half and half). Another surprisingly delicious drink is hot water with a sprinkle of cinnamon and a little bit of honey. It has healing properties and tastes really good.
HOT BATHS – I often hear members say that they want to eat before bedtime because it helps them go to sleep. You don’t need food to do this. Just dipping into a hot bath for 5-10 minutes helps raise your body temperature so you effortlessly drift off to sleep.
A HOT WATER BOTTLE OR BUCKWHEAT PILLOW – One of the greatest things I discovered in the past ten years was how a hot water bottle is probably one of the greatest things ever created. It helps with pain and warms you up. Those buckwheat pillows that you pop in the microwave are pretty terrific too but I don’t have a microwave so I’m sticking with my “hottie.” If you’ve never tried either of these, please do. It can provide a comfort that you thought only food could.
EXERCISE – It can be easy to convince ourselves that it’s too wet or cold to go out and exercise, however, learning how to befriend the weather can help with feelings of powerlessness. These days there are so many types of microfiber materials and insulated shoes that you can feel warm no matter what’s going on outside. A short walk in the cold always makes you feel warmer when you come inside.
BODY HEAT – Snuggle under a blanket with your kids and watch a DVD, find your spouse and give them a prolonged embrace or keep your pets close by. Human beings are pack animals. We need other people, and warm bodies do make the cold less intimidating.
Staying warm is a critical human need. Food warms you up for a little bit but then makes you colder as cortisol and insulin levels drop after eating. Explore other ways to stay warm and comforted this winter without food.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 1:21:32 PM | 4 COMMENTS
FRIDAY, JANUARY 15, 2010
People, People Who Need People
Barbara Streisand croons, “People, people who need people are the luckiest people in the world.” Simply put, we need people. A brilliant PBS documentary called “This Emotional Life” that was hosted recently by Daniel Gilbert, PhD talks about how our fulfillment is directly correlated to the quality of our relationships. If disharmony or disappointment in your relationships contributes to your overeating, keep reading.
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In the mini-series, “This Emotional Life”, the controversial study by psychologist, Harry Harlow is cited. For those that are not aware of this study, I’ll summarize it. Dr. Harlow took rhesus monkeys and separated them from their mothers. He then gave them the option of two possible surrogates. One surrogate was a wire shaped monkey that had a baby bottle that provided food. The other was a cozy, terrycloth surrogate who provided softness but no food. The monkeys always preferred the comfort over the nourishment. Whenever a frightening stimulus was brought into the room, the monkey ran to the terrycloth surrogate.
Even bearing in mind that rhesus monkeys require the act of clinging more than human babies, there is perhaps something for us to learn from this experiment. Human mothers often use feeding time to bond with their children. As a result, as adults we may return to the idea that food will provide us with comfort, when perhaps it’s a different sort of comfort that we truly crave. It is not food that soothes us when we are frightened, anxious or upset, it is softness. Gentleness. Love.
But how do we get it? That can be the hard part. We often act the most repellent when we need people the most. We criticize, when we want to connect. We nitpick instead of admitting our vulnerable needs. One line that I loved in the documentary by psychologist, John Cacioppo, who is an expert on loneliness and the effects of social isolation, was, “loneliness is not a feeling, but an urge, like hunger or thirst that indicates something essential is absent.” To me, this reflects that quality human contact is not an added benefit of being human, but a necessity, as critical to our health and well-being, as food, water, or air. Read more about loneliness.
I saw evidence of this when a member of Shrink Yourself recently shared that after an upsetting event she was tempted to binge. Instead, she PAUSED in the way that we teach members to do in the Shrink Yourself program. She called a friend and shared the biggest laugh that she had had in a long time. Afterwards, she was clear that reaching for food would have prevented this phone call. And the human connection is what she needed to remedy the upsetting event, not the tasty treat. So often we go for the quick fix because we don’t know how to connect. Because it feels easier. Because we don’t believe we have people to connect to. Or, are afraid to make ourselves vulnerable. Or have been disappointed too many times to reach out, yet again.
No matter what you have experienced, don’t give up. Human connection, albeit painful at times, is well worth it. Some quick ways to bring more human connection into your life.
- Hug Someone – A hug that lasts six seconds or more triggers the release of a hormone called oxytocin. This hormone makes you feel more loving. So, take time to hug. It can be your spouse, your child, your elderly neighbor, even a stranger. I try to give my son six of these a day and when we forget, we give a thirty-six second hug before bedtime
- Make Your Children Smile – MRI studies show that when a mother sees her child smile the same part of the brain lights up as the part that lights up when she thinks about food or sex. There is a great reward in just seeing a smile.
- Volunteer – Many elderly people are touch deprived. Visiting a senior center and holding someone’s hand benefits the both of you. One of my first jobs was as the director of a senior center. I remember loving how different elderly people’s hands felt—the thinness of the skin and the way the veins felt like the roots of a tree.
- Forgive Someone – A common quote is, “Do you want to be right or do you want to be happy?” Ask yourself, is there a grudge you’re holding that you could give up?
Look for little ways to connect. These little connections make a big difference. If you’re confused about a relationship in your life take the Shrink Yourself profile to see how that relationship is affecting your overeating. We need each other. If we could only stop being so strong and admit that, life might get a little softer, a little richer, and a whole lot sweeter.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 7:38:20 AM | 4 COMMENTS
FRIDAY, JANUARY 08, 2010
Are Your Resolutions Being Sabotaged?
We’re one week into 2010. You might be thinking that this is a new year, a new decade, a new beginning. Part of you is trying to be really hopeful, optimistic, and dedicated and another part of you might still be trying to deal with the backlash of the holiday season. If you think you should be happy and all gung ho but are still stuck in an inexplicable funk, read on.
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The holidays are a super charged time of year. It’s no wonder that you might require some recovery time after the presents are put away, the tree thrown out, and the routine of regular life back in effect. Even when the holidays have gone well they still demand extra travel, extra work, extra expenses and extra calories, all of which can be exhausting. If you were hoping to feel refreshed and renewed when the calendar switched to January and you’re not, you might be falling into one of the following categories. Understanding what you’re feeling might prevent you from wanting to numb out with food.
Linus Loses His Blanket
Believe it or not there are actually people who derive great comfort from the holiday season. Perhaps you live far from family and the holidays provide you with a time to be together. You pack up your things, face airport delays, and travel the distance. The gap gets bridged and for a few days you are blanketed in the comfort of the dearest people in your life. If you fall into this category, January can be fraught with the pain of separation and loss. A desire to be closer to the ones you love might get awakened. You might have to face existential questions about what’s really most important in your life. And quite simply you might just be lonely for the ones you love. If you find yourself in this situation, be gentle with yourself. Don’t push yourself too hard. You might even want to take some time to connect with loved ones by phone, Skype or email.
Expectation & Disappointment
No matter how old we get we still harbor the secret hope that our families are going to be what we need or want them to be. We enter into experiences with family hoping that this year is going to be different. This year we will be seen, heard, and understood. This year we will connect. By building up this expectation we set ourselves up to fall a lot further. The disappointment we feel is greater. When this happens January can be a month of mourning. We might feel sad for the things we never got as children, and still don’t get as adults. If you find yourself in this position give your inner child compassion. Be gentle with yourself. Then, look for ways that you can create rituals and traditions in the future. You can’t make up for lost time, but you can use your sadness to get clear about what you want to create in the future.
Out of the Woods
Maybe you spent your holidays in survival mode. Misbehaving children. Drunken arguments. Recent losses whether they were due to death, disease or divorce. Fights. Moods. Demands. Sleepless nights. You may have done the best you could to muscle through and now you’re just plain spent. For some, family gatherings can look more like a war zone than a picnic. Now, that you’re out of the woods you’re simply trying to catch your breath and find your center. If you find yourself in this position, be gentle with yourself (do you detect a theme here?). Get extra sleep. Talk to friends. And remember that you have a choice to do things differently than your relatives.
If you set resolutions for yourself about diet and exercise and already feel yourself slipping, it could be because underneath the surface you are still processing difficult feelings or upsetting events. Shrink Yourself (14-Day Free Trial) can help you process the feelings that make you overeat or binge. Food never helps but it is a readily available, automatic response. If you’re reaching for food, it could be a red flag that you’re unresolved about the holidays. Take a look. Be honest with yourself. And as you’ve heard again and again, be gentle with yourself.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 12:02:07 PM | 3 COMMENTS
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 31, 2009
New Year—New Approach
Do diets work for you as long as you follow them but then something always trips you up? Does the onset of a new year make you feel obligated to embark on a big new weight loss regime? Do you hope this year will be different but fear it will be the same as past years? If so, you’re not alone. Before you try a new diet, start with a new approach. Here’s how:
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Any sensible diet will work but only if you can follow it. It’s not that you don’t have the willpower. If you’ve been told that or believed that, it’s simply not true. There has always been a missing piece. The missing piece is that there are strong underlying emotional forces at work…strong feelings and powerful habits you may not even be aware of that sabotage even your best intentions. When you understand what these are, you’ll be able to stick to any eating plan you choose.
So, start this year with a K.I.S.S.-- Keep It Simple Sweethearts.
1. Select a straightforward eating and exercise plan that is realistic for your lifestyle. Picking something too extreme or rigid (no matter how many other people that plan might work for) often kicks up a person’s rebellious side.
2. Use your Shrink Yourself program to get clarity and understanding in the moments when you don’t want to follow through on the plan you’ve committed to. In studies of successful dieters, success was always increased exponentially by having some sort of emotional counseling or support. Since this is not financially possible for all people, Shrink Yourself gives you an affordable, easy and private way to address the inevitable emotional issues that dieting presents.
Some of you might be well aware what the emotional roots of your overeating are. It might be self-doubt. It might be that you use food for reward. It might be that you feel like food is your only source of true comfort for any number of reasons. Maybe that reason is grief, or loneliness or fear or frustration. If you’re still struggling with your weight or feel like food has control over you, chances are you haven’t yet unearthed the underlying emotional reason beneath your overeating.
But the good news is you can. This year can be different. Don’t try to get new results with an old approach. Try a new way. Take ten minutes and complete your Free Dieter’s Profile and uncover your own distinctly personal issues that have blocked your dieting success in the past. Do it now to begin to recover the power to stick to your diet and control your weight in 2010 and for all the years to come.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 5:12:39 PM | 1 COMMENTS
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 23, 2009
Same Same but Different
A friend went to Asia years ago and came back using the expression, “same same but different.” The expression is used to explain things that are familiar yet unique. So much of the holidays are about tradition. There is a comfort to doing things the same way each year. But remember that you can also carve out a new way for yourself and your family if the old way hasn’t been working, particularly when it comes to food, fighting, and even fun. It can be “same same but different.”
Keep reading for a great story that might inspire you this holiday season.
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Last year I posted the following story. To create a tradition, I am going to post it again. I think it beautifully (and briefly) conveys the process that emotional eaters must go through to overcome their struggles and recover their power over food. See if you can find yourself in one of the chapters and know that we each had to pass through these different phases before leaving emotional eating behind.
THERE'S A HOLE IN MY SIDEWALK
Autobiography in Five Short Chapters
By Portia Nelson
Chapter One
I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I fall in.
I am lost .... I am helpless.
It isn't my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.
Chapter Two
I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend that I don't see it.
I fall in again.
I can't believe I am in this same place.
But, it isn't my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.
Chapter Three
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there.
I still fall in ... it's a habit ... but, my eyes are open.
I know where I am.
It is my fault.
I get out immediately.
Chapter Four
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.
Chapter Five
I walk down another street
This year make your holidays “same same” but also different in any way you need them to be different.
You really can have all the same tradition without having the same struggles.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 10:00:35 PM | 5 COMMENTS
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 18, 2009
Sweeten Your Season Without Sugar
Sweets and chocolate are many people’s weak spot. The holidays can be the hardest time of year to avoid sugar. And the more of it you eat, the more of it you want to eat. Sugar often triggers binges and bouts of overeating. Not to mention that the stress of the holidays can send you looking for the escape that food provides. If you want to find the sweetness of the season without sugar, keep reading.
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CONNECTION
We all relish in those deliciously sweet moments of human connection where we feel seen and understood. Sometimes those moments almost seem as though they happen by accident and we don’t know that we can actually recreate them. I find that generosity (even when we don’t feel like it) can get things going. Listen more than you talk. Take time to discover something new about a person even if you believe you know them very well already. Go out of your way to be extra gracious, affectionate or verbally expressive. Taking a small step forward can make a huge difference. Remember, don’t do it because there is an end result you’re looking for but rather simply to connect.
SERVICE (Giving and Receiving)
During the holidays there are plenty of ways that we can be of service. Doing something for another person can take the focus off of ourselves and put the focus on something even bigger. Is there a food bank you can volunteer at? Are there elderly neighbors that could use a lift to the store? Can you offer to wrap presents for someone? On the flip side, maybe you need something but are afraid to ask. In Judaism, it’s believed that receiving something you need is as much of a blessing as giving something when you have extra to give (food, time, or money). Maybe you can look for little ways to give people an opportunity to give to you. Yesterday, a friend offered to drive me to the airport (I didn’t even have to ask) and I said, “yes.” A member who is recovering from surgery mentioned how a neighbor brought her the crossword puzzle everyday that she was bedridden. Another woman I know, Jules, really wanted a manicure but couldn’t afford one. By an act of serendipity a friend offered to take her for a manicure. The friend actually enjoyed getting Jules a manicure as much as Jules enjoyed receiving one. Looking for ways to give AND receive can provide opportunities for sweetness. It’s not only a virtue to give, it’s also a virtue to let others give to you.
PLAY
If you find yourself getting too caught up in the work of the holiday, a quick bite of a dessert can feel like the only way to call in the sweetness of the season. If so, take some time to play. Sing. Laugh. Relax. Some people intuitively know how to bring play into their adult life and others know how to play well with children. I, for one, always felt like I didn’t know how to play, especially with children. As a result I didn’t feel like a very fun mother. Now, I am learning be less hard on myself. I can be with my son (and other children) while they play. Just try watching a child play for about fifteen minutes. Something magical will happen. I find that the less I do, the more the child likes it. They lead me and by letting myself be led, I am learning how to play. It is a delightfully sweet feeling.
Sugar is the least fulfilling kind of sweetness in the world. Look for ways to bring new and unexpected forms of sweetness into your life during the holiday season and throughout the New Year to come.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 10:11:20 AM | 1 COMMENTS
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 11, 2009
3 Ways to Try a New Approach This Holiday Season
The first Hanukkah candle gets lit tonight and the countdown to Christmas begins. Then, there’s the solstice, Kwanza and so many other reasons to party and eat. You might already have had your fair share of seasonal cheer, and food, and it’s only December 11th. If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over, and over again but expecting different results then, take a more sane (and by more sane, we mean different) approach to the holidays this year.
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Here are some ways that you can observe the old way of doing things and create a new way this year.
The Old Way
You spend your days worrying about getting everything perfect. The perfect meal. The perfect outfit. The perfect gifts. You are grumpy, broody and very busy. The holidays come and go in a whir. They’re over. You’re exhausted.
The New Way
Shrink Yourself shows you how to set realistic expectations of yourself and others. By doing this you can avoid disappointment and savor the moments. The holiday starts to look different than it ever has before. You slow down and you feel rejuvenated when they’re over.
The Old Way
You feel uncomfortable at social gatherings so you escape into food. You eat, and eat until you feel sick to your stomach. You go home grateful that the holidays are over and now, you can finally get back on track.
The New Way
Shrink Yourself teaches you how to be aware of when you’re uncomfortable, and how to check in with yourself and identify your real feelings. When you know what you feel you have choices besides eating. You can speak up. You can ask for what you need. You can walk away. You can comfort yourself.
The Old Way
You keep eating because you just want to taste a particular holiday treat. You can’t get enough of it.
The New Way
Shrink Yourself helps you understand that quality is better than quantity. You now know that when you hear a voice that says, “I just want it,” that it’s a childlike part of yourself that’s operating. It’s a part that simply wants what it wants, when it wants it. It doesn’t want to be limited or deprived. Therefore, you pause. You take a reasonable sized portion. And you savor each bite. You actually discover that eating in this way (without wild abandon) has you enjoy your favorite foods even more.
Don’t dive yourself insane. Don’t wait till New Year’s. Try a new way—The Shrink Yourself way. And the next few weeks could be the best ones you’ve had in years.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 10:21:53 AM | 3 COMMENTS
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 04, 2009
Holiday Binge Eating
Are you dreading the arrival of the cookie platters to your workplace? Are you resigned to the fact that you’re going to gain weight in the weeks to come so why bother fighting it? Would you be willing to believe that there could be a different way of approaching the holidays than you have in the past? If so, keep reading. This year can be different than the ghosts of holidays past (especially when it comes to your eating habits).
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These days binge eating is the most common eating disorder out there. In America, it affects 25,000,000 people annually but during the holiday season I would venture to say that number increases exponentially. The overly simplified answer to why we binge during the holidays is because there is easy access to so many tempting foods. But the more accurate answer is that the heightened tension synonymous with the month of December puts enough pressure on people that they experience what binge eaters struggle with every day of the year—the lure of using food to feel better.
There are some common reasons that people binge. If you are aware of what they are you can plan ahead, and avoid some binges that have seemed inevitable in the past.
OVERWHELM
A feeling of overwhelm is one of the most common triggers for a binge—that sensation of not knowing where to begin can send a person right into the quick escape and instant gratification of food. The holidays are overwhelming, period. There are guests, and gifts, and school performances to prepare for. Even the most positive parts like setting up a tree, or singing songs, or making latkes can still be overwhelming. And that’s not even mentioning the tension, the worries about money, the family fighting, the cleaning and catching up at work, the unmet expectations that can also accompany all the great things. What’s a person to do? First, be aware that eating doesn’t help with any of these things. What does help is planning ahead, getting organized, asking for help, and as much as possible, being in the moment. If you’re honest, you know the times when you get overwhelmed so take a moment to plan for them. Just a few minutes, and a piece of paper, can help you avoid at least a few of the binges you might have otherwise had in the days to come.
POWER STRUGGLES
Another common reason for binges is power struggles. And yes, the holidays are rich with these. There are struggles over who is doing the wrapping, the buying, the cooking, the driving. There might be fights between spouses about how much to spend on gifts—one is overly generous, the other cautiously frugal. The children are demanding things that your flailing bank account simply can’t support without going into debt. There is a desire to please. There might be harbored resentments from years past. There might be differing opinions about where to go or what to do. And no matter how much you push or pull, someone is going to be upset. Power struggles are another reason that people reach for food. When the desire to pull someone over to your way of thinking doesn’t work, a binge can feel like an instant ticket out of the discomfort. Try a different approach. The game of tug-o-war only works when both people are pulling. Rather than exhaust yourself (or escape into food) by pulling and pulling, you can simply drop your end of the rope. The game will be over. If you’ve fought and fought for the same things year in and year out, try seeing what happens when you simply give up the fight.
PROGRESS
The way that anyone gives up a binge pattern, whether they are ordinarily a binge eater or just a seasonal binge eater, is the same. They don’t expect to give it up cold turkey. So, if you’ve binged in the past during the holidays, it may be unrealistic to expect that this is going to be the year when you don’t binge at all. However, what binge eaters have to realize is that progress looks more like this: having less binges, eating smaller quantities of food, understanding what the binge is helping you avoid or getting back on track more quickly after a binge. Holiday bingers can apply this same idea of progress. If you handle overwhelm and power struggles differently you may reduce your regular holiday binges by at least 50%. That, in and of itself, will be progress and will help you gain half the amount of extra weight you usually do.
If you take a new approach, not only will you eat less, the holidays will be more enjoyable. You will spend more time in the moment, and less time in your head. You’ll probably laugh more than you worry. Sing more than you yell. And when you do choose to indulge, it won’t be a month long feeding frenzy, but a decadent treat that you’re able to calmly savor as just one small part of what you love about this time of year.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 4:00:23 PM | POST A COMMENT
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 2009
The 12 Types of Holiday Eating & Tips for Tackling Them
It might seem like holiday eating comes from the fact that delicious foods are readily accessible almost everywhere you go but that is a small part of it. Emotional Eating is the main reason people gain weight over the holidays. Emotional Eating really takes hold at this time of year because tensions run high. Understanding the 12 types of holiday eating and how to tackle them will help you regain the pleasure of the holidays (or for some enjoy them for the first time) as well as preventing the extra pounds that can pile up at this time of year.
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1. Food: My Adult Pacifier
If you get really hungry when you feel angry, depressed, anxious, bored or lonely, you use food to dull the pain that these emotions cause.
Tip: Holidays can bring up all of these emotions. Spend some time determining what else besides food can soothe your anger, depression, and anxiety.
2. I Stick Up For Myself by Stuffing Myself Up
If you react by getting hungry when others talk down to you, take advantage of you, belittle you, or take you for granted, you eat to avoid confrontation.
Tip: Holidays are a time to stand up for yourself and not take things personally. Sometimes, standing up for yourself means knowing when to walk away from someone you can’t reach a resolution with.
3. Food: My One Faithful Friend
If you crave food when you have tension in your close relationships, or feel disconnected form people, you eat to avoid feeling the pain of rejection or anger.
Tip: Holidays are a time when you can be surrounded by those you love or those who really push your buttons. Take some time before the holidays to address unresolved conflicts with loved ones.
4. When I'm Chewing I Can't Hear My Inner Critic
If you tend to become hypercritical of yourself - if you label yourself "stupid," "lazy," or "a loser" - you eat to stuff down self-hatred.
Tip: Along with making Holiday Gift-Giving lists, make some lists of how you’ve grown this year and the things you love about yourself.
5. I Don't Have Love but I Have Food
If your hunger gets activated because your intimate relationships don't satisfy some basic need like trust or security, you use food to try to fill the gap.
Tip: Holidays can really bring up a lot of disappointment in your intimate relationships (or sadness if you lack an intimate relationship or quality friendships). Attracting the right lover means loving yourself. How can you give yourself what a lover might give you this holiday season?
6. Food Can't Fill Up the Missing Parts in My Past
If you eat to make up for the deprivation you experienced as a child, you eat to forget the past.
Tip: Holidays can trigger years of hurt feelings and disappointments. How can you create something new this year: your own traditions, your own rituals, something that will set it apart from all the holidays that haven’t worked?
7. Don't Tell Me What to Eat
If you eat to assert your independence because you don't want anyone telling you what to do, you eat to rebel.
Tip: A lot of scrutinizing eyes might be watching what you’re eating during the holidays, just waiting to make a comment. No matter how wrong that is, keep in mind that eating to assert your independence only hurts yourself.
8. I'm Too Busy Eating to Take a Risk
If your appetite kicks in when you're faced with new challenges - if you use food to avoid rising to the test - you eat to protect yourself from the fear of failure.
Tip: With all the hustle and bustle of the holiday season it’s easy to forget taking care of yourself. Don’t grab food on the run. Plan your tasks and take your time with them so you don’t forget yourself in the busyness of it all. Letting yourself get too hungry leads to poor food choices and binges.
9. Fall in Love? I'd Rather Fall in Chocolate!
If you stuff your face in order to avoid your sexuality - either to stay overweight so that nobody desires you or to hide from intimate encounters - you eat to protect yourself from getting too close.
Tip: During the holiday parties this year move away from the dessert table and take a risk by speaking to someone.
10. I Use My Body as a Battleground
Emotional eaters often eat to pay back those who have hurt them (often in the distant past). They use their bodies as battlegrounds for working out old resentments. If you do this, you eat to get revenge or control anger.
Tip: The Holidays are a time when this emotional eating habit can really get stirred up. Eating whatever you want in front of those that hurt you in the past can feel like the perfect punishment. Remember, it only prolongs YOUR suffering.
11. Nyah! Nyah! I Won't Grow Up!
If you eat to make yourself feel carefree like a child, you eat to keep yourself from facing the challenges of growing up.
Tip: The Holidays can bring out the child in all of us yet they are better enjoyed with the firm footing of an adult who can make empowered choices (about food, communication, who they see, how much time they spend at relatives, etc.).
12. I'm Secretly Afraid of Being Thin
If you overeat because you fear people’s jealousy or reactions to your weight loss - either consciously or unconsciously - you eat to avoid the fear of change.
Tip: If you’ve lost weight you might feel judged by family members who were more comfortable with you having a bigger body. Use the holidays to remember that being fit is a gift you give yourself.
Emotional hunger is real. It's part of life for everyone and it really gets revealed during the Holiday season. Click here for helpwith holiday emotional eating. If you address the things that make you emotionally hungry (and during the holidays there can be a lot of those things), you'll have a chance of having real satisfaction in your life. But if you eat each time you're emotionally hungry, you'll miss the opportunity of satisfaction, and your emotional hunger will continue to grow along with your waistline
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 3:06:07 PM | 4 COMMENTS
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2009
3 Ways to Alleviate Loneliness & The Hunger It Creates
Are you longing to love or be loved? Do you wish there was someone who could see, accept, and understand you for who you really are? Do all of the expectations of the holiday season leave you feeling more lonely than usual? If so, you’re not alone. Many Shrink Yourself members have been talking about their feelings of loneliness and how those feelings can become hunger, especially during the holidays. Here are some suggestions to quell loneliness now and throughout the year.
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A. EMOTIONAL EATING & ISOLATION.
Emotional eating often goes hand in hand with isolation. Think of the child, misunderstood by his/her family, who begins to sneak food for comfort. The child longs for recognition but settles for sweets. Once this coping mechanism has been installed they may depend on their familiar “friend” for decades. The shame about eating tends to encourage them to isolate themselves whenever they want to spend time with food. Eating in this way also takes them back to a place where they had no control over their circumstances. Each time they eat, their early feelings of powerlessness are reinforced. Take away the pacifier that food provides, and this person would have to face their true feelings. No matter how frightening, only then could they admit to themselves, and others, what they really feel, who they really are, and what they really need. As long as they rely on food they will be less likely to reach out in a way that would have them heal and meet people who could provide a reparative experience for what they didn’t receive as children.
B. LONELINESS IS NORMAL
Loneliness is a part of the human condition. We can share ourselves, we can make ourselves vulnerable but there are ways in which we will always be separate and that can be hard to bear (in some moments more than others—like New Year’s Eve for example-Yikes!). However, part of the problem is feeling like we shouldn’t feel lonely. This unrealistic expectation of ourselves (and others) makes us fear loneliness so much that we’re unwilling to look it right in the eye. When we see how normal it really is then we don’t have to feel ashamed or ungrateful for the moments when we feel lonely at a crowded party or lonely despite having healthy children or lonely inside of a happy marriage or relationship. Quite simply loneliness is part of being a human. That being said, the words of Orson Welles remind us that, “We're born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we're not alone.” This leads me to the next point.
C. THE CURES FOR LONELINESS
I have said it before but it bears repeating, food is not a friend. It can’t replace the friendship, companionship, or romance of a real person. Even animals long to be with other animals. Dolphins travel in pods, dogs in packs and horses in herds. Humans were not meant to live alone. And these days, despite technological advances that make us accessible to anyone in the world at any time of day, we have become more and more isolated. No wonder, so many are relying on food more and more. So, how do we break this cycle?
1. Make Quality Friendships.
I know more than anyone how hard it is to make friends. I was one of those kids that didn’t have real friends till eighth grade. This was a painful part of my growing up. Making friends didn’t come naturally but as a result I’ve had to carefully consider who is a real friend and how to forge a friendship that can last in a fulfilling way. Someone once told me that we should go towards things that are warm and comforting. If you attempt to befriend someone where you have to do all the work, where you’re always left feeling put down or undermined, this probably isn’t the beginning of a good quality friendship. Attempts to forge relationships with unavailable people can leave you lonelier than being alone. Some things to keep in mind are to look for friends in places where you’re likely to have similar values (for example, a spiritual community, a volunteer program, a book club, a university class, etc.). Second, pursue relationships that are reciprocal. If it’s not reciprocal, put your energy somewhere else. All relationships have times of more give and times of more take. But if it’s more or less balanced you won’t find yourself calculating precisely who did what. Third, recognize that friendships take time. Be wary of people that come on too strong or claim to be your best friend without having earned the title.
2. The Two Sides of Technology
There are many downsides to technology. We text instead of talk. We buy things online instead of speaking to a salesperson. We have automated answers instead of customer service. So many of the every day ways that we had human contact are being eliminated. Be aware of the ways in which technology can be keeping you from reaching out and making real contact. But also look at the flip side. Technology makes the world smaller and can put you in touch with people anywhere, at any time. Use technology wisely to bridge the gap. Use it to find online support groups and phone bridges. Uses it to find like-minded people and activities going on in your community. For example, the Shrink Yourself message boards provide one of the most supportive, insightful, and caring communities I've ever seen, either online or in the world. You can become a member of The Shrink Yourself community here. In other words, try to find the ways that you can use technology to bring you out of isolation instead of using it to build a bigger, stronger wall around you.
3. Connect to Something Bigger
Thoreau dealt with his existential loneliness through his connection with nature. Carl Sagan through his connection to the cosmos. Joseph Campbell through myth. The mystics through spirit. Whether it’s a sunset, a starry night, a fall tree, a meteor shower, or an act of serendipity there are ways that we can’t deny we are connected to each other and to the world. No matter what your belief system the things that remind you of your connection, as opposed to your separation, can soothe that inevitable loneliness that we all feel.
When you don’t eat, the loneliness might get stronger at first. Face it. Ask it what it’s trying to tell you. Then, use it to reach out, to make new and more fulfilling connections, and to get fed spiritually. The more you face your loneliness, the less hungry it will make you at the holidays or anytime of the year.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 11:32:48 PM | 15 COMMENTS
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2009
Using a Plateau to Propel You Forward: What to Do When You Stop Losing Weight?
Have you ever been in that place where you’re doing everything right but the scale seems stuck? Or worse, you’re doing everything right and you gain a pound or two? These plateaus can often lead to feelings of defeat. These feelings of defeat can have you throw in the towel but they don’t have to. Here’s a plan for using your plateaus to propel you forward from now on.
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You might think of a plateau in weight loss as a setback or even a failure but plateaus are normal. And they can actually be a form of progress especially during the holiday season. If you don’t lose weight but don’t gain weight either in the next six weeks you’ll still be far better off come January 1st.
One member of Shrink Yourself had an important breakthrough this past week that I’d like to share with you. The notes in parentheses are mine.
“I have done Shrink Yourself in conjunction with Weight Watchers since the early part of this year (Shrink Yourself is a great complement to any eating plan you choose and some members continue on past the 12-week Shrink Yourself program because of the support the program provides particularly if they still have weight to lose). I have done pretty well, steadily losing, till the end of September, when I hit my 10% weight loss initial goal. Since then I have been floundering. I have gained a little (2 pounds), but have felt just terrible. Defeated. Unable to do it. All my fantasies about how much weight I would lose between Sept and Jan 1 were weighing heavily on me. I was slipping in to old bingeing habits. (Please note that it’s often this kind of pressure to meet a deadline that can make us anxious which leads to needing the comfort of food to deal with our uncomfortable feelings)
So last week, I was reading about plateaus on the Weight Watchers site. I decided to embrace where I really am. I set a goal to get back to my 10% point, in other words, lose the two pounds I had gained, and then maintain that until Jan 1. This was completely liberating. I have a solid, achievable, good plan that will leave me in a great place by the beginning of the New Year. I feel confidant that at that time I will be refreshed, and ready to lose 10% of my body weight again. My cravings and binges ended immediately. It really was remarkable.
In the past, I have lost significant weight over and over, but then get to a plateau, get discouraged, and start regaining. It really feels like taking a breather from weight loss, and giving my self a break from unrealistic goals puts me in a success mode instead of the failure mode I was in for the past several weeks. And it is thanks to Shrink Yourself, and the wisdom, knowledge, and support I find here every day that has put me in the place to do this.”
When you find yourself at a plateau like that Shrink Yourself member just described, don’t give up, just find a way to relax. When you hike in the mountains there are times when you’re climbing, and then there are times when things level off. It’s important to use those plateau periods to regain momentum, to rest, to enjoy the view, and to acknowledge how far you’ve already come.
Our black and white thinking is what has us throw in the towel and give up. Especially during the holiday season it’s easy to resign ourselves to the fact that we’re probably going to gain some weight so why bother at all. But the simple truth is that even if you don’t lose weight in these next few weeks, maintaining your current weight can still be better than gaining. Why not try a 14-Day Free Trial and use the next two weeks before Thanksgiving to arm yourself with an awareness that will have you get through the holidays with more emotional strength and less extra pounds?
Many people might think this is the worst time of year to think about your weight but it can be the best time by learning new ways of interacting with others, understanding why we overeat, and holding out for long-term fulfillment instead of succumbing to immediate gratification. You might not necessarily be ready to embark on a weight loss regimen at this time of year, but with a just a few extra skills in your belt, you might be able to maintain your weight instead of gaining. And that won’t be perfection but it will be progress.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 1:58:46 PM | 6 COMMENTS
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 06, 2009
My Virtual Shrink: A New Program by Dr. Roger Gould
Life can be hard and feelings can be hard to handle. As an emotional eater you already understand the way that unresolved issues have the ability to affect your life in a profound way - for you, that means your weight. Emotions turn into overeating. Overeating turns into extra weight. And extra weight turns into more negative feelings and health issues. The whole thing is a vicious cycle.
Thirty years ago, Dr. Gould set out to create an effective and affordable alternative to psychotherapy. With the Shrink Yourself program he has been able to offer thousands and thousands of people the kind of help with their weight that they formerly were only able to get through live psychotherapy.
Now, he has designed a new program. It is called My Virtual Shrink. It is a guided, step-by-step program that helps you do for yourself what a psychiatrist or psychologist would do, namely help you solve problems and learn about yourself. This unique method has been shown to provide benefits comparable to traditional psychotherapy.
It’s a great program to recommend to friends and family who don’t struggle with their weight but want to improve other areas of their lives. And if you do struggle with your weight, it’s a complement to the Shrink Yourself program. After all, the more effective you are at understanding your feelings and overcoming your problems, the less likely you are to binge or overeat.
My Virtual Shrink sessions can help with many areas of your life. For example:
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• Difficulty handling strong emotions.
• Reducing depression or anxiety.
• Feeling blocked about your future.
• Disagreements with someone.
• When someone is pressuring you.
• When someone's behavior is bothering you.
• Being more optimistic or less negative.
• Coping with feelings of stress from financial problems.
• Becoming more comfortable with yourself.
• Concern for someone's well-being.
• Feelings of stress of being single.
• Tension in your intimate relationship.
• Stress from an illness or a disability.
• Dealing with your child's behavior problems.
• Concerns about job security.
• Tension with a boss or co-worker.
• Stress from struggling to make ends meet.
My Virtual Shrink is not psychotherapy. You will not be entering into a doctor/patient relationship. But it is an alternative way of learning what you would otherwise learn in therapy, the kind of things about yourself and your mind that you don't learn in school. Dr. Gould has translated the critical components of psychotherapy into a step by step, guided process, which are actually "sessions," that will help you do for yourself, in the comfort of your own home and on your own timetable, the same kind of thinking and learning that you would do if you came to my office for treatment.
This is something unique, never before seen on the internet. The only way you will be able to decide if this is right for you is to start building your Smart Plan. That will be a snapshot of the problems you need to address and the changes you need to make. It will introduce you to the program, and it will give you some additional material to read. That is the free introduction to the program. If you don't want to go any further, you can simply push the delete button and your information will be erased, which includes your email address. If you do that, you will not hear from us again. Click here to start building your Smart Plan for free, and begin to see how you can start taking the necessary actions to get unstuck and move your life forward.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 1:17:29 PM | 5 COMMENTS
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2009
Be Proactive About Holiday Binging (Start Now)
This is an interesting time of year. The school season is up and running. The holidays are looming nearer. The days are getting shorter. And even here in sunny California, the nights are getting colder. All of this CAN add up to excuses to stay inside and eat comfort food, but it doesn’t have to. Halloween can kick off a two-month sugar binge that starts tomorrow and doesn’t let up until your New Year’s resolution. This year CAN be different if you’re proactive. Here's how:
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As the holidays approach we can't help having a combination of hope that this year will be different combined with certain defeat that we’re bound to gain some weight in the two months to come. We can’t imagine that things could possibly be different but they CAN.
1. ACTIONS MAKE ALL THE DIFFERENCE
We tend to believe that we must change our thinking in order to change our behavior. But real change actually happens in reverse. The more you change your behaviors, the more your thinking changes. After a consistent period of time where you act like a person who is fit and healthy, you come to believe you ARE fit and healthy. In the Shrink Yourself program, tools like The Hunger Coach, help you set off a binge before it happens. Sometimes, just resisting one binge is all it takes to begin to prove to your mind that you don’t need to give into every craving for food. Then, the next binge, or bout of overeating, is even easier to stop in its tracks. How can you do things differently this year? Halloween is a critical time to be proactive. If you take a new approach this Halloween, you’re less likely to give into that, “why bother, there’s no way I’m going to get ahead at this time of year” feeling. Taking empowered actions on the thirty-first will fortify you to keep facing the holiday season in an innovative way. Give away the candy. Don’t buy your favorite candy for trick-or-treaters (you’ll only end of eating it yourself). Decide how many pieces you’re going to have before trick-or-treating and then stick to it (For example, I allow myself a mini almond-joy and a peppermint patty—my son is excited to find them for me and I savor them while we're walking-my Halloween indulgence is less than 100 calories and doesn't disrupt my weight management).
2. EXERCISE
This can seem like the most unrealistic time of year to start exercising but exercising will actually positively affect everything you do (and some of the things you feel, too). Most of you know that I walk as many mornings as I can with one of my close friends. It clears my mind because we chat about current events, our kids, and our conflicts. It sets me up work better for the day. And it helps me feel like I’m making an effort to take care of my body. Most of you also know that I hate to exercise but I do know that something as simple as this thirty-minute walk a few times a week significantly alters things. For one, it is one of those actions that I talked about in the paragraph above that helps to shift my idea of who I am. Two, this little bit of movement and fresh air sets me up to handle stress better (and let’s face it, the holidays can be stressful). And lastly, when I'm taking steps (literally and figuratively) to take care of myself, it makes me want to keep on taking more steps. Don’t wait till you feel like exercising, just commit to doing something small. The holiday season might just seem like a breeze when you’re armed with a few endorphins.
3. GRAY IS THE NEW BLACK AND WHITE
You can’t afford black and white thinking this holiday season. Somewhere in between a strict diet and giving into every holiday treat there is a happy medium. Look for ways to find middle grounds. Instead of being like a kid on Halloween eating everything that finds its way into your goodie bag, be discerning. What are your favorite candies? Which were the ones you looked forward to most when you were a kid? Eat a couple of pieces, and really enjoy them. You don’t have to abstain from everything, but you also don’t have to eat everything in sight either. If there’s one holiday party that you particularly look forward to. Indulge yourself at that one, but don’t do it at every party you go to. When invited to friends decide if you’re going to indulge in bread, wine or dessert (instead of all three). There are simple ways to cut back, here and there, without missing out entirely. These little alterations can make a big difference in how much you gain this holiday season, and how you feel about yourself.
The key is really being the one in charge. If you’re aware, thoughtful, and proactive you get to be the one that decides when you’re going to indulge and when you’re going to refrain. You get to be the one who chooses food instead of food choosing you. You get to be the one in control. Halloween no longer needs to be the entry point to a rabbit hole, that like Alice, you can’t help falling through for the next two months
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 11:57:49 AM | 7 COMMENTS
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 22, 2009
4 Ways Fat Feels Safe
Who doesn’t want to escape the world sometimes? Fat can feel like the perfect hiding place. It can offer a boundary between you and the people you live with, work with or commute with. It can keep out unwanted attention. It can keep you on the sidelines of life. Do you eat to keep yourself safe? Don’t be so sure until you keep reading.
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The most common form of emotional eating is using food to cope with uncomfortable feelings. However, there are so many more complex (and sometimes even confusing) reasons that we have for being afraid to lose extra weight. Many of these reasons fall under the umbrella of eating to feel safe. These are covered in the later part of the Shrink Yourself program because they are almost like the graduate program of your emotional eating education.
Here are some of the common reasons that fat can feel safe:
KEEPS UNWANTED ATTENTION AWAY
Maybe you’re shy. You may want attention but when you get it you’re not so sure what to do with it. Being looked at or noticed can take some getting used to. Putting on extra weight might have felt like a quick fix to get people to stop looking at you. This could have been a rash decision you made a long time ago. If so, exercise the muscle of letting people look at you.
PROVIDES A FALSE SENSE OF PROTECTION FROM PREDATORS
Maybe you were hurt by someone that you trusted or even by a stranger. You may never want to be hurt in that same way again. Making ourselves less attractive can feel like a way to protection against predators. However, this is a false sense of safety. It doesn’t take the place of avoiding unsafe situations, healing an old wound or creating boundaries.
KEEPS YOU FAITHFUL
In the Sex and the City movie, Samantha puts on extra weight because she is afraid she’ll cheat on her partner. Fat might feel like it protects you from your own adulterous urges by making you less attractive to prospective mates. It can take the place of admitting you’re unhappy in your current relationship or from knowing how to honor your commitments but it’s not a real solution to a real problem.
KEEPS YOU ON THE SIDELINES OF LIFE
When you’re overweight there are certain games you might feel less eligible to play. If you’re afraid to take risks in your career, in your friendships or in your romantic life, you might be keeping on extra weight to have a good excuse for not making yourself vulnerable.
Fat only provides a false sense of safety and security. Only you can make yourself feel truly safe by the boundaries you set, by the situations you get involved in, and by the people you surround yourself with. In Week Nine of the Shrink Yourself Program we show you how you might be using your weight to feel safe and how to create a real sense of safety in your life so you no longer need the extra pounds for protection.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 5:38:03 PM | 12 COMMENTS
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 15, 2009
7 Things to Learn from Successful Calorie Cutters
For years now, studies have been done on the benefits of calorie - restricted diets. Animal research has shown that eating less means longer, healthier lives. Now they’re trying to figure out if the same thing applies to humans. An article in the Sunday, October 11 New York Times Magazine by Jon Gertner made some good points about calorie restriction. Yes, Americans are getting fatter and fatter (“obesity rates increased in 23 states last year and declined in none”). Yes, less calories seem to promise less disease (“A recent spate of papers in some of the world’s leading medical journals demonstrate that in small studies, human subjects following such diets experience astounding drops in cardiovascular risk factors; a forthcoming review on cancer risks in animals with such diets, moreover, suggests a stark correlation — fewer calories mean fewer tumors.”). And yes, despite the probably vast benefits of a calorie-restricted diet it will be extremely difficult for many of us to adhere to (“Another problem humans present is their susceptibility to temptation. Primates and mice are kept in cages and eat what they are fed; none have ever had to choose to forswear a spring roll or a cupcake.”).
If you’re an emotional eater, can you ever expect to benefit from the promises of an eating plan such as this one? Maybe. But it will take some internal work first. What I found so interesting about the article is what we can learn from the kinds of people they believed could be successful in a study such as this one. For obvious reasons, you can only study the results if you choose people who are capable (mostly in their mind) of sticking a strict eating plan for two years time. So, how can we begin to cut back and restrict our calories based on the types of candidates they chose?
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Here are some of the things they all had in common:
1.Motivated and Highly Organized
I have said this before but it stands repeating that cultivating organizational skills actually helps with eating well. You don’t have to naturally be an organized person. By working on acquiring those traits, you will get better at adhering to a sensible eating plan. To do this create systems in your home, manage your time and manage your money. How can you get more organized?
2.Strong Moral Support
If you want to eat well, you need support. Period. End of discussion. Who is on your team?
3.A Stable Job (with some flexibility)
Even if your job is not as stable as you’d like it to be, you can still look for ways to incorporate a more regular schedule that is not overly rigid. In other words, you need a balance between structure and flexibility. How can you create more of this in your life?
4.Accountability & Counseling
It is important to have someone to answer to and to have someone to hoist you up when you falter. Having a buddy to check in with can really help you succeed. You can exchange emails with someone at the beginning of the day to set intentions and at the end of the day to acknowledge successes. Even if you can’t afford counseling, the article said that you could get the same benefits from an online program that would offer tools and group meetings. Anything that keeps you aware will help. Who are you accountable to?
5.Bank Your Calories
Look at the big picture instead of just the immediate moment. People in the study banked their calories. For example, if they knew they would be eating more at a social event or baseball game on the weekend, they’d eat less calories for a few days leading up to that event. This is a simple practice that we can all adopt. How can you plan ahead?
6.Discernment
People in the study found that when they had to restrict their calories they actually enjoyed food more because they had to carefully choose where their calories were going. While overeaters seem like they love food more than most people, many of them report that they don’t even enjoy the majority of what they eat. Sometimes, having free reign on food reduces the amount of pleasure we get from eating it. Eating less actually makes food taste better. How can you savor your food more?
7.Paradigm Shift
While it was believed that many people were attracted to a calorie-restricted diet out of a fear of death, they found that the opposite was true. People were willing to commit to this kind of eating plan because of their love of life. Many reported wanting to live longer to be able to see their children grow up and that being healthy was a necessary component in this equation. How can you shift your paradigm so that cutting back on food doesn’t give you a feeling of deprivation but rather a feeling of privilege?
Whether or not, we can actually stick to a calorie-restricted diet is not nearly as important as learning how to use these people’s experiences to help us restrict our own caloric intake, if only by a little. In a world, where we have gotten so accustomed to consuming too much time, too much money and too much food, it might be interesting to see what living looks like when we learn to get by on less.
To read the article in The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/11/magazine/11Calories-t.html?pagewanted=print
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 4:53:28 PM | 14 COMMENTS
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 08, 2009
H.A.L.T. Before Your Next Bite of Food
Do you unconsciously reach for food when you’re hungry, angry, lonely or tired? These are the moments when you’re most likely to make less than optimal choices about eating. In 12-Step Programs the acronym H.A.L.T. is used to help people remember that when you’re hungry, angry, lonely or tired you’re more vulnerable to your drug of choice. You can use this acronym to help you remember to pause before you take your next bite of food. Here’s how:
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Are you Hungry?
Some of us wait too long to eat which puts us in survival mode grabbing whatever food is in front of us. These are the moments when we fill up on things that are quick, easy, and often not very nutritious. One way to prevent this from happening is to manage our hunger better. This might mean keeping snacks with us or taking time to make sure that we nourish ourselves with good quality food throughout the day. However, if you’ve let the day get past you and suddenly find yourself famished, HALT, before you take a bite. Just a short pause can help you reconsider what you’re about to eat. A healthy food choice will help you get grounded and prevent the onset of a binge.
Are you Angry?
Many of us deal with anger by grabbing something to eat. I have heard people use food to prevent themselves from doing or saying something awful. One woman said, “I eat so I can stuff the angry words back in.” If you tend to eat when you’re angry, develop an alternative solution for dealing with anger. Is there a friend you can call? Can you punch a pillow or go for a run? Can you write out your rage on a piece of paper? Before you devour something, HALT, ask yourself if you’re really angry instead of hungry. Anger deserves to be discharged in a healthy way, stuffing it in for too long can make you implode.
Are you Lonely?
In lonely moments, particularly lonely nights, many people enlist food as their faithful friend, loyal confidante, companion or lover. But is food really a friend? Do friends make you fat, sick or disgusted with yourself? Loneliness is a real problem that deserves a real solution. Before you whip up that midnight snack, HALT, ask yourself if you wish you had company instead of something to eat. If you’re lonely, put the food down and call someone, visit a message board on the internet for support or simply find a way to be a good source of company to yourself. Sometimes, we are lonely because we haven’t learned how to make the most of the moments when we’re alone. Filling up never helps loneliness, but reaching out does.
Are you Tired?
Food can often be the way we compensate for not getting enough rest. We eat to push through our tiredness to meet a deadline. New parents eat to get through the day when they’re exhausted from interrupted sleep the night before. We eat to entertain ourselves through the afternoon lull at work. You’d be surprised how many of us, well into adulthood, don’t know how to make sure we get enough rest. Before you head out to Starbucks for that afternoon treat or fix yourself a snack to eat on the couch while watching TV late at night, HALT, ask yourself if you’re tired. If the answer is yes, and it’s during the day, a cup of mint tea or a few minutes of deep breathing can perk you up quicker than an espresso and a Danish. If it’s at nighttime, you might want to consider tucking yourself in early. Food is never a substitute for sleep.
H.A.L.T. is a quick and easy-to-remember acronym. Use it anytime you’re about to eat something that isn’t going to propel your weight loss efforts forward and more than that is not going to help you get your real need addressed. Are you hungry, angry, lonely or tired? If you are, there are real answers to those problems that food just can’t fix.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 2:24:27 PM | 10 COMMENTS
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 02, 2009
Do You Get Hungry After Dark? More Information for Night Eaters.
Last week, we sent out a tip about night eating. It was just a short suggestion about how brushing your teeth after dinner can prevent you from overeating or snacking at night. We got a huge response from people that definitely resonated with the issue of night eating. Certainly, for longtime emotional eaters, and bingers brushing your teeth is like putting a band-aid on a bullet wound. However, it does work for some, particularly people that have an extensive oral hygiene practice that they do at night. But it's not enough.
Night-eating is a pervasive, and difficult component of emotional eating. For some people it starts as far back as infancy. A quick tip is therefore not going to cure it. However, an awareness that there is more to night-eating than simply the urge to eat tasty treats is a start. The Shrink Yourself book is 288 pages, and the Shrink Yourself online program is 12 weeks long. In other words, it takes time to find the psychological root of why you get hungry when the sun goes down.
One member, who responded to an Expert Advice letter I wrote her shared that after getting my help she realized what her night eating was about. Here is a quote she allowed me to reprint in the hopes that it will help you begin to see the root of your night eating.
"This is a response to the good words of Ms. Fiordaliso regarding my problem with night eating:
Ms. Fiordaliso, as soon as I read the words unmet need for affection or closeness from a spouse I knew right away that might be the catalyst for my night eating. You see, my husband of 32 years has worked nights for the last 20 years, and I am always alone. He leaves at 4:30 PM and doesn’t return home until 4:30 AM. I have been battling boredom and loneliness for so long! But guess what? He just retired in December 2008, and he is a wonderful companion to me now! I guess I will have to undo the night eating habit that has accumulated these past 20 years. Thank you so much for bringing that factor to my attention! I never would have thought of it. This is one of the reasons I find Shrink Yourself to be such a wonderful program. It opens so many doors for people. Thank You!"
To explore your night eating, I recommend the following things:
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1. If the night brings up a lot of feelings for you look into what the night represents for you personally. For most night eaters they have some anxiety about the evenings. It might be loneliness. It might be the time you miss your spouse or wish you had a spouse. It might be fear of being home alone. It might be dread for the day ahead. You will have to take an inventory of the feelings that the night brings up for you. Next to the list write responses of things that could address those feelings directly. And remember to be gentle and loving with yourself when you do this.
2. If the night makes you crave certain things, don’t keep those foods in the house. Some might be willing to get up and drive to fulfill a craving but putting some space between you and the sweets (or salt or ice-cream) can make a difference. At least, it gives you some time to make another choice.
3. If you associate your nighttime activities with snacking you might have to change your associations. Many people come to link things like watching TV with eating. Find something else to do when you watch TV so you develop a new association (fold laundry, do needlepoint or knitting, drink tea.).
4. If you have anxiety, particularly about falling asleep, you might rely on a food coma to jump-start your drowsiness. Your mind has found a solution that works. You have to show your mind that there is another option. Create a bedtime ritual for yourself to induce sleepiness. A bath is a great option. 5-10 minutes in a bath can raise your temperature slightly and induce sleepiness. A cup of soothing tea, a lavender cream foot rub, a meditation CD. It might be a few things. Play with this until you find what works for you. And avoid drinking caffeine even in the morning.
5. If you are plagued by boredom or loneliness you’ll have to find ways to make your evenings fulfilling. Try finding some evening activities that you look forward to: a book, a rented movie, a craft or hobby or a visit with a friend.
6. If you have a pattern of waking up and eating throughout the night you’ll have to wean yourself off of food the way a mother weans an infant off the breast or bottle. Infants reach a time when they no longer need food in the night but they still want it. My son, at one point, was waking up every two hours wanting to be nursed. I had to wean him off of night nursing. This took time, and a lot of frustration for both of us. Even if you’re an adult, you’ll have to prove to yourself that you no longer need food in the night. Be a loving mother to yourself, and keep in mind that over time you’ll stop waking up for food and you’ll probably feel better rested.
7. If you’re wound up at night you can do some yoga, deep breathing, meditation or buy yourself a bottle of Rescue Remedy Night Formula (you can find it at a health food store or Whole Foods).
Night eating is difficult, but not impossible, to overcome. I hope something here helps to shed some light on this dark issue.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 3:04:42 PM | 13 COMMENTS
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 2009
Are You A Procrastinator? A Parent? Try A New Approach
Do you procrastinate or get annoyed by someone else’s procrastination? Does your work or your child's homework frustrate you? Does it create anxiety and aggravation?
All this stress can lead to overeating but it doesn’t have to. A better handle on these frustrating issues could mean less eating.
Here are some tips to use for yourself or for helping your children:
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IT’S THEIR WORK, NOT YOURS
Abraham Lincoln said, “The worst thing you can do for those you love is the things they could and should do themselves.” With the best of intentions to be helpful, we often do too much for our kids. The stress of an assignment shouldn’t feel like more of your responsibility than your child’s. If you’re stressed it means you’re working too hard. Find ways to empower your child to work independently. For me personally, I know I’ve lost when I allow myself to get into a power struggle with my son over homework. It’s never going to go to a good place from there. Instead of telling an answer is wrong, ask them to take a closer look. Instead of giving them an answer, ask an open-ended question that helps them look at things from a different angle.
LEARN TIME MANAGEMENT
As a child, I was a procrastinator. Even in High School, the way I got through late night deadlines was by eating bowls of M & M’s. And by college I was doing thirty page papers the night before they were due. This made for a lot of upsetting all nighters. The reality is that children don’t know how to manage their time. It’s not something that’s taught and often we end up as adults still not knowing how to manage our time well. If you have a child with a project, help them determine how much they’ll need to work each day (or each weekend) for it to get done without cramming. If you’re the person with time management issues, ask for help. Ask a friend who seems to always arrive on time with style and grace how they do it. Time management doesn’t come naturally but it’s a skill worth learning because it reduces your stress level exponentially.
TRY A DIFFERENT APPROACH
If your same tactics for helping with homework (or for getting your own projects done) have always produced the same results, try something new. For example yesterday I had an epiphany. They tested my son at school and the test showed that he relates to the world from a musical, body-centered place. I, on the other hand, relate to the world from a verbal and mathematical place. For him, these areas were so small they were barely on the chart. Finally, it hit me. I have been trying to reason with him in the way that things make sense to me (with words and logic) and it hasn’t worked. Today, I can use the information I got to try a new approach. How can you try things in a different way in order to yield a different result?
Homework (and papers and taxes and projects) are a necessary part of life but we don’t have to let them work us up so much that the only option is to overeat. By developing new skills we can move through things with greater ease and far less stress. And we can model that for our children, too.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 12:03:53 PM | 7 COMMENTS
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2009
A Shrink Yourself Success Story
Are you wondering if Shrink Yourself can help you? When it comes to weight loss, we can be so afraid of trying a new approach because we don't want another failure under our belts. See how one Shrink Yourself member used the program to get past her weight loss plateau.
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I caught my first glimpse of myself as an Emotional Eater when I was in another weight loss program. I was good at that program. I lost 45 pounds at a steady rate, with 25 pounds to go. Most of those 25 pounds were my “divorce weight.” That was the weight I had gained in a single year - the year of my divorce.
The 25 pounds were stubborn, unwilling to leave. My program counselor said that the weight could be tied to the pain of my divorce. I coined the phrase “crossing the divorce divide” and kept trying.
Let’s fast-forward to December 2008, three years later. I was still trying. Incredibly, I was stuck at the doorway of those 25 pounds, and in desperation I signed up for Shrink Yourself. “Crossing the divorce divide?” Let’s try “lost in the divorce forest.” When I introduced myself in SY, I cringed at the defeat I exposed: “I’ve been on a weight loss plateau for 3 years now.”
My expectation on joining was that I would learn skills, recognize patterns, get some self-discovery and then voila! weight-loss success. Instead, I was swamped with unpleasant and unpalatable observations (some new, some already-known). Here are a few: I was feeling-phobic; I was extremely critical of myself, ignoring or minimizing my life successes; I had a constant background anxiety that ranged from moderate to severe; my earlier weight-loss success had left me with an obsession about eating, an obsession that occupied enormous amounts of my time; I felt food was my only friend; I felt food was the only way to feel safe.
Those insights changed my sense of my inner landscape. After several weeks at SY I started to wonder why I thought weight was my issue! I should be concerned about the quality of my life!
One SY idea particularly resonated with me: reclaiming power. I saw repeatedly that underneath my Emotional Eating Episodes (EEE) were a pervasive sense of being victim, of feeling powerless. Conversely, “claiming the power” seemed to reliably dissipate an Emotional Eating Episode - at first through using the Hunger Coach, but then more spontaneously on my own.
Also, thanks to Janice Taylor, a.k.a. Our Lady of Weight Loss, I had already developed a new mantra for facing difficult food situations: “the woman I am becoming “… would never eat those chemicals masquerading as food, … is very careful about what she puts in her mouth, … doesn’t see any of the treats at the Starbucks checkout as food.
I had worked with Janice individually before SY. She showed me how much easier it is to say YES in the face of a vision of something new, rather than to say NO to an ingrained habit. SY capitalizes on this kind of switch, too, finding positive replacements for unhelpful patterns.
Working on EEEs led to another discovery: anxiety was a presenting emotion rather than my only emotion. I found more subtle currents of anger, fear, sadness, and grief “under” the anxiety. Aha! Anxiety is a socially acceptable response for me, into which I could divert a lot of feeling. Through SY’s precision: “overwhelmed’ versus “pressured” versus “frustrated” versus “disappointed” - I started dialing down the anxiety knob, and addressing underlying emotions instead of facing unfocused anxiety.
This leads me to the most precious insight gained from SY. It came from a post another member put on the forum. To paraphrase, the member spoke about how, for some, the practice of cutting was a form of expressing pain in a tangible way. Could it also be that being overweight was a form of expressing the otherwise “inexpressible” parts of myself? This rang so true for me! Eureka! I stopped casting my difficulty in terms of “what went wrong at my divorce” and instead I began to ask “what am I trying to express?”
The SY forum offers invaluable help. In reply to posts about my difficulty in expression, another member offered art as a vehicle, specifically Soul cards (Soul Collage, by Seena Frost). Creating a set of my own cards, searching for images and symbols that uniquely define “me,” became my passion.
This search for expression has had profound results. I allowed myself experimentation with “step-out” clothes, with a longer hair style, with what I dared to risk/say in my relationships, etc. It has helped my creativity enormously – particularly my professional design skills.
Back to my weight! What about those 25 pounds! I have to smile in amusement. I have become interested in so much more of my life than my weight, but yes, my weight is still a focus. I lost as many as 15 pounds since I began, although 5 of those pounds have recently found me again (net loss: 10 pounds since December 2008). I still work at the 10 healthy habits, notably on savoring food and preventing binges better.
As important as my weight remains to me, weight loss is actually the least of what I value from SY. Between the search for expression and penetrating through my anxiety into other feelings, life has taken on a new dimension. I no longer consider food to be my only friend: food is not a friend - or enemy - at all! I no longer use food as a way to feel safe. At times of peril, food can make digestion louder than the peril - but only for a time.
I can see that I am breathing deeper, dressing better, have less background anxiety, and spending less time thinking about the foods that I eat. I focus on the woman I am becoming and how she wants only fresh, healthy foods for nourishment, not entertainment or distraction. I enjoy swapping stories and insights at the SY forums, and on valuing the online friends I’ve found here.
All in all, SY has been an excellent investment in my future and a transforming factor in my life. That’s just awesome.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 5:00:35 PM | 13 COMMENTS
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2009
Exes and Overeating
Since I became the clinical director of Shrink Yourself four years ago, one of the triggers of overeating that I have heard mentioned most often is relationships. People commonly share things like, "My extra weight came on after the divorce" or "When my husband cheated I put on fifty pounds" or "I binge every time I have to deal with my child's father." In other words, unresolved Ex issues cause a whole lot of emotional eating. This blog entry will have two purposes. One will be to share with you the launch of my new book, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Ex* (including giving you info on some exciting upcoming readings and TV appearances). The other is to give you a few tips on Exes and overeating.
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Drop the Rope
The core premise of Dr. Gould's book is that emotional eating comes from a false sense of powerlessness. And struggles with Exes can certainly bring up a feeling of powerlessness. For years, I had the same fight with my son's father. I didn't know how to stop getting into the same old go-nowhere conversation. And I couldn't understand how I could possibly let him repeatedly get to me in the same way. If you find yourself in the same familiar struggle over and over again with your Ex try a new approach. The game of tug-o-war only works when both people are pulling. If you drop your end of the rope, if you refuse to engage or fight, then the game is over. You may find yourself having not just fewer fights, but fewer binges too. This little tip has saved me so many times.
A Break-Up Doesn't Brand You
Many of us feel like our divorce or break-up is like a Scarlet Letter, letting the world know that we're a failure. Initially, I felt that way when I found myself alone with a child at twenty-seven. It seemed like everyone else was raising their kids as a family (with millions of single mothers in this country, obviously that wasn't the truth, it's just how I felt). When you make your break-up mean something devastating about yourself (for example, you're unlovable, unattractive or unworthy) you end up eating to nurse that wound.
Look to the Future
There's a reason the rearview mirror is so small and the dashboard is so big. It's because where you're going is so much more important than where you've been. It took me a lot of time to realize this. After my son's father and I broke up, I spent a lot of time mourning the idea of an intact family and believing that meant I wanted my Ex back. The pain of a break-up or divorce is inevitable but the suffering is optional. No matter what you've experienced, and I know many of us have experienced really unfair endings to our relationships, there is always something better to look forward to on the road ahead. The love that came into my life after I let that relationship go was far better than any I could have imagined. When we are resisting our current reality, we feel powerless and end up engaging in emotional eating.
If you're still confused about your Ex, I invite you to read the book I co-wrote with Heather Belle called Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Ex* or visit my website (everythingex.com). You can also watch us on The Today Show on September 16, 2009. If you're in New York or Los Angeles please come out to one of my book signings (I always love meeting Shrink Yourself members and friends in person).
New York: September 16, 2009 7:30 PM Barnes & Noble (8th Street & 6th Avenue)
Los Angeles: September 27, 2009 6:00 PM Book Soup
Never again do Ex issues need to be your reason for overeating. Your Ex life can lead to your best life.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 5:08:20 PM | 7 COMMENTS
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 04, 2009
This Labor Day: Don't Work!
Do you think personal growth, psychological work, and getting to know yourself are about as much fun as a root canal, waiting in line at the Department of Motor Vehicles or filing your taxes that are two years late? Exploring your emotions doesn’t have to be hard work. This labor day have fun discovering yourself.
Emotional eating finds its roots in fear. We become afraid of our feelings. We become afraid to look inside ourselves. We become afraid to express who we are, what we need, and how we feel. All this fear has us seek refuge in the comfort of food. There is a long weekend ahead of us. It can be a weekend of overeating. Or it can be something else. It can be a weekend where you tell yourself you deserve that last ice cream of the season before school starts. Or it can be a time to savor the last sips of summer. Let’s look for some ways that you might bring some levity, humor or play into this Labor Day weekend.
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Loosen Up
Weekends can be a tempting time to get obsessive about things that need to be done in the house. All of a sudden it’s Saturday morning and all of the exterior windows need to be washed or the abandoned shed in the back must be cleaned out. This weekend, loosen up. It’s okay to play a board game before washing the dinner dishes. It’s okay to let a bed go unmade or a pile of laundry go undone. Normally, I am an advocate for staying on top of chores but once in awhile, it’s okay to let yourself off the hook. Just for this weekend, how can you focus more on fun and less on work?
Laugh
Make sure to laugh everyday. I heard an old joke that I love tonight. It’s from the Woody Allen movie Annie Hall. Alvy Singer, the main character, says, “It was great seeing Annie again and I realized what a terrific person she was and how much fun it was just knowing her and I thought of that old joke, you know, the, this, this guy goes to a psychiatrist and says, 'Doc, uh, my brother's crazy, he thinks he's a chicken,' and uh, the doctor says, 'well why don't you turn him in?' And the guy says, 'I would, but I need the eggs.' Well, I guess that's pretty much now how I feel about relationships. You know, they're totally irrational and crazy and absurd and, but uh, I guess we keep going through it...because...most of us need the eggs.” Rent a pile of funny movies. Find a big hill to roll down no matter how old you are. Play a game or Pictionary or charades. If you have to, ask to be tickled. If you still can’t laugh, look into Laughter Yoga (www.laughteryoga.org) How can you laugh this weekend?
Do Something You’ve Never Done Before
We all get stuck in the rut of life. A simple thing to shake this up is to do something you’ve never done before. This weekend find something to discover, explore or invent. Find a part of your city you've never been to. I think I’ll go to MOCA, one of the museums I have yet to go to since moving to Los Angeles. Listen to your child without thinking of what needs to be done next. Paint. Or Knit. Or learn a few sentences in a foreign language. Learning, seeing or doing something new can refresh your whole perspective. What new thing can you try this weekend?
As you do these things check in with yourself and see how you feel. Do you feel calm, vulnerable, scared, refreshed? How does play and fun affect your hunger? Getting to know yourself doesn’t have to be hard work. It can be an adventure.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 1:47:16 AM | 6 COMMENTS
THURSDAY, AUGUST 27, 2009
10 Things You Must Know About Hypothyroidism
As many of you know, I have struggled with thyroid problems for the past ten years. I actually think my thyroid problems began when I was around eleven but they were only diagnosed when I was twenty-five and was experiencing a bout of hyperthyroidism with a resting heart rate of 125. At the time, the doctors suggested I take radioactive iodine. I refused and my thyroid stabilized but a few years later I was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis, a common form of Hypothyroidism. I have spent a lot of time researching both western and eastern approaches to caring for hypothyroidism. I wanted to share ten things that you must consider if you have a thyroid condition. Please note: I am not a medical doctor. These are simply things that I have discovered over the years.
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1. Check Your Ferritin Level
Ferritin indicates the amount of iron that you have stored in your body. People with hypothyroidism often have a hard time absorbing iron. Low iron levels can create a lot of uncomfortable feelings that mimic symptoms of hypothyroidism—foggy thinking, depression, fatigue, low sex drive, etc. If you determine you have low levels of Ferritin, you may need to take an iron supplement. Just be sure that you don’t take it with your thyroid replacement.
2. Use Iodized Salt
In a world that has come to appreciate good quality food, many of us use sea salt. While sea salt is delicious, it doesn’t contain iodine—a necessary nutrient for the health of your thyroid. One way around this is to use iodized salt in your cooking and sea salt on salads and on the table.
3. Avoid Soy Products
Soy has been shown to inhibit normal thyroid function. Small amounts of soy are fine but these days many people have substituted soy products for many of the foods that they eat using soy cheese, soy meats, soymilk, etc. Limit your soy intake.
4. Avoid Goitrogens
Goitrogens are foods which suppress thyroid function. They include broccoli, cabbage, brussel sprouts, mustard, kale, canola oil, soy, pine nuts, millet and peanuts. In people with normal thyroid function, goitrogens can cause hypothyroidism and goiter. In people with hypothyroidism, goitrogens can further depress thyroid function and can exaggerate a goiter.
5. Check Your Cortisol Levels
Cortisol is a hormone produced by your adrenal glands. Often adrenal exhaustion precedes hypothyroidism. If you get diagnosed with hypothyroid having never helped your adrenal glands, you may not be able to absorb synthetic thyroid like Synthroid or levoxyl. If you have hypothyroid, check your adrenals. You can do this with a saliva or blood test.
6. Consider Taking T3 Along With T4
Synthroid or Levoxyl only provides T4. The thyroid produces two hormones T3 and T4. T4 has to be converted into T3 to be absorbed. However, many people have difficulty converting T4 into T3. Therefore taking some T3 (keep in mind if you take Armour thyroid or Naturethyroid they contain both T3 & T4) can often help relieve symptoms.
7. Take Your Temperature
People with hypothyroid often have a lowered body temperature. If your body temperature hasn’t yet come up to normal, it may mean that for one reason, or another you’re not absorbing your thyroid replacement hormone or that you don’t have a high enough dose. If you haven’t been diagnosed with hypothyroidism taking your temperature can help determine if your thyroid isn’t working properly. Here is a method for taking your temperature: http://www.drrind.com/therapies/metabolic-temperature-graph
8. Avoid Wheat
It has been shown that many people who develop hypothyroidism also have a sensitivity to gluten. If you have hypothyroidism give yourself a month off of gluten products and see how you feel. I have experienced great relief by cutting wheat out of my diet.
9. Meditation and Yoga
Meditation helps naturally balance Cortisol levels. This can help you if you already have hypothyroidism or help you avoid it if you don’t yet have it. If you already have hypothyroidism it’s a good idea to do a shoulder stand once a day. If you don’t know how to do one, here’s how: http://www.yogajournal.com/poses/480
10. Consider the Emotional Component
The thyroid gland is a butterfly shaped gland that wraps around your throat and voice box. A butterfly represents transformation. Is there some way in which you are avoiding change? Is there something that you have avoided expressing? Expressing yourself can positively affect your thyroid condition. Louise Hay says that thyroid problems come from a feeling of “I never get to do what I want to do. When is it going to be my turn?” The affirmation that she recommends is “I move beyond old limitations and now allow myself to express freely and creatively.”
It is tricky to balance the thyroid and I know how frustrating it can be but if you take some of these things into consideration it will get a lot easier. Hypothyroidism can pose a real challenge to losing the weight that we want to lose, but if we have the right information it doesn’t have to be quite so hard. You’re not alone. There is so much we can learn from one another.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 5:42:59 PM | 13 COMMENTS
FRIDAY, AUGUST 21, 2009
How Stress Gets You Into a Rut that Makes You Overeat
When you fall into a habit of overeating, does it feel like it gets easier to keep repeating that undesirable behavior? One binge will lead to three. One bout of late night emotional eating can lead to a whole week of late night emotional eating. If it feels that way, it’s because that is actually what happens. When we get into a rut, it becomes easier to stay in that rut.
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In this week’s New York Times, Natalie Angier, published a brilliant piece about the vicious cycles that get created when we’re under stress. She references a study by Nuno Sousa of the Life and Health Sciences Research Institute at the University of Minho in Portugal that reveals how the brains of chronically stressed rats will atrophy in the areas of decision making, while becoming overly developed in the area of habit formation.
This could explain why when under stress we abandon our best thinking and fall back into old habits like overeating. Angier mentions Dr. Robert Sapolsky, a neurobiologist who studies stress at Stanford, who said, “we’re lousy at recognizing when our normal coping mechanisms aren’t working. Our response is usually to do it five times more, instead of thinking, maybe it’s time to try something new.” So, even though overeating doesn’t really help us feel better we can’t stop ourselves from continuing to do it. It’s simply how our brains are wired when we’re under stress.
According to Angier, the good news is that with only a few weeks of vacation in a supportive environment the formerly stressed rats were able to think clearly and decisively. Perhaps we can learn from the rats by taking these last few weeks of summer to get out of our ruts, rest our brains, and remember how to use our best thinking especially when it comes to what we eat, and how we choose to cope with the stress in our lives. The rest will actually reshape your brain.
To read the whole article: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/18/science/18angier.html?_r=1&emc=eta1
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 10:12:32 AM | 10 COMMENTS
THURSDAY, AUGUST 13, 2009
Food As a Form of Punishment
A few weeks ago I covered the topic of food as a source of reward. On the flip side, people also use food and overeating as a form of punishment. Using food, whether as a source of comfort or as a hostile act towards yourself or others, is still emotional eating. It is giving food more power than food deserves. Do you use food as a form of punishment? Before you answer, read keep on reading.
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1. Using Food to Hurt Yourself
Over the years I have worked with many people who have reported that they ate to punish themselves. It was an act of self-hatred. “I found myself eating ten Twix bars because I hated myself so much and it was a way to get back at myself,” someone shared with me. Food, especially in excessive quantities, can hurt us. No different than the person that cuts themselves, overeating or binging, can be a way that we inflict pain on ourselves. Do you eat to hurt yourself?
2. Using Food to Hurt Someone Else
Another common theme is people that eat to prove to someone else (usually a parent or a spouse) that they can’t be controlled. One man who had harbored a long-standing resentment towards his wife made sure that he didn’t lose the weight she wanted him to lose by eating an ice-cream sundae every night on his way home from work. It is normal to resist being dominated by another person but does it really make sense to put your own health in jeopardy out of spite? Are you punishing anyone in your life by overeating or staying overweight?
3. Using Food to Get Back at Society
In a more global way, perhaps our obesity epidemic is just a grand scale way that we are punishing a society that expects us to be perfect. We may get so down on ourselves believing that we will never live up to the ideal, that we abandon all effort entirely. Are you fed up with a society that expects you to be too thin, completely fit and tightly toned?
If you are using food as a form of punishment, you may want to ask yourself why. Is it really getting you the result you want? Not just in terms of how your body looks and feels, but is it getting you the love and acceptance you want from a partner or parent? Is it getting you a feeling of belonging by the world? And if your answer is no, how can you handle your real feelings productively instead of by punishing with food? You deserve to eat well, feel good and have fulfilling relationships. Overeating as a form of punishment postpones treating yourself well.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 5:26:58 PM | 18 COMMENTS
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 05, 2009
What Can a Year of Shrink Yourself Do For You?
In my posts I often talk about emotional eating from various angles and how it affects various aspects of our lives. I try to explain how the Shrink Yourself program impacts emotional eating as both a professional and as a fellow recovering emotional eater. However, the best way for you to understand some of these things is to listen to the words of one of our members who has been using the principles of our program for a year. Her post gave me great hope that emotional eaters can recover their power, lose weight and live more fulfilling lives. I hope her words will give you the same sense of inspiration I experienced.
I started SY in early August of 2008—so I've now had about a year.
Am I an emotional eater? Or am I a healthy eater? Sometimes I can be either, but I do want to recount the progress I've made in recovery after about a year of Shrink Yourself:
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1. I've lost 64 pounds. Woo hoo!
2. I've changed my goal from an " ideal weight" goal to a body fat goal. I'm 32.1% body fat today. I'm shooting for 29% because my YMCA trainer told me that's the high end of the healthy range for females my age.
3. I got rid of my high blood pressure—I'm no longer on medications for it.
4. My high cholesterol, hyperlipidemia, is gone now, too.
5. Pre-diabetic symptoms are gone.
6. Even though I'm still overweight, I accept and even pretty much like my body now. I look at other women my age now, the vast majority of whom seem to be overweight or obese, and I generally feel like "my body is okay.” I'm not sure I'll make that body fat percentage goal because the last couple of months I've been losing it so slowly—but I at least want to maintain what I've done and hopefully keep making slow progress.
7. My junk food consumption has gone from daily to less than once a week. Other than a couple of Subway sandwiches, I can't recall eating any fast food in the past year. Primarily I now cook my own natural food.
8. Now I see cooking and meal prep as nurturing myself, not as drudgery.
9. Where I used to see sweets and refined foods as desirable, now I see them as undesirable, and very rarely have cravings for them.
10. Whereas I used to never get 5 fruits or vegetables per day, now it's probably a rare day when I don't get at least a dozen servings. If I overeat now, it's usually on healthy food and does very little "damage,” either to my health, or my appearance, or to how I feel about myself.
11. I can think of only a handful of 500-700 calorie binges in the past year. Mostly I am doing binge prevention.
12. I am exercising enough—usually 6-12 times a week (I like to split my workouts up into two 30-45 minute sessions instead of once a day).
13. I can run now. In fact--- I've improved so much in cardiovascular fitness I can't easily get my heart rate into the cardio range with most exercises other than running now.
14. I rarely use food as a reward (as opposed to nearly daily before.) I enjoy food but don't tend to think of it as "a treat.”
15. I often listen to my body (but not always). My husband took me out to eat last week for prime rib (which I'm sensitive to) and I said "what the heck if I'm going to eat something bad for me I'm not stopping till it's gone" and stuffed myself—and then regretted it. I realized it had been so long since I had had the stuffed feeling that I had totally forgotten how miserable it is and gave myself a "memory booster.” Last night we went out to eat again and believe me I DID NOT stuff myself again and chose only healthy foods from the all-you-can-eat buffet.
13. I can usually tell the difference between physical and emotional hunger. I'm getting better at not eating when I know the hunger is emotional—but sometimes I still do it anyway.
14. Sometimes I savor my food and am not the first one finished (This is still the habit that’s the toughest for me).
Anyway--- I'm hoping this will be helpful to some of the people newer at the program wondering if the program will really help them. For me, it clearly has even though I'm still a work in progress and am still in the program.
As the Clinical Director of Shrink Yourself I want to remind you that there is hope. Patterns can change, even long-standing ones. There is so much more at stake than just the number on the scale. What’s at stake is your health, your fulfillment and your confidence in your ability to take control of your life.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 3:43:31 PM | 23 COMMENTS
WEDNESDAY, JULY 29, 2009
Food is NOT a Reward!
The other day I was driving past a Jack in the Box restaurant and I noticed one of the signs in their window. It was a picture of their mascot (the funny cartoon headed guy) with a slogan that said (paraphrasing here), “Treat yourself…not to a massage or anything, just something off the menu.” Food is not a reward, I repeat, food is not a reward. One of the things that most confuses us in our relationship to food is the belief that food is a reward. And worse than that, many of us believe, food is the only reward that we have.
If you think food is a reward, keep reading.
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Maybe you were treated to an ice-cream for a good score on a test. At my son’s school they have root-beer float, popcorn, and popsicle parties for jobs well done. We are given the message that food is the acknowledgment we get for putting in the effort or putting up with something intolerable. Maybe your mother told you if you went on boring errands with her you could go through the drive-thru of your favorite fast food restaurant.
All of us need reward, acknowledgment, and recognition for work well done. It’s part of human nature. Sadly, food can become the most obvious and readily accessible form of reward we can find. Once we’ve found food, we stop looking for other creative ways to reward ourselves, and others. I work with people everyday that don’t even know how they might reward themselves, if not with food. We work together to find other ways. And if you want to leave a big part of your overeating behind, you’ll need to find other forms of reward, too.
Non-Edible Rewards for Children
As parents, we inadvertently give our children the message that food is a reward. It’s almost unavoidable. Recently, my nine-year old son was put on a restrictive diet for medical reasons. He can’t eat wheat, dairy, soy, or sugar. The simple solution of offering food to reward him is no longer an option. A carrot stick doesn’t really seem like a tasty treat to a kid. His adherence to this way of eating makes him even more worthy of a reward. But what? Here are some suggestions: Movies, books, $5 to spend in a store of their choice, undivided attention, watching a show with them that THEY like, wrestling, playing a board game, doing an art project, taking them to a museum, looking at childhood photos or videos, building a fort, sending them an email telling them how proud you are.
Non-Edible Rewards for Yourself
As a single-mother I often don’t have someone looking out for how much I’ve done or how tired I might be. In the past nine years, I haven gotten really good at finding ways to reward myself. I know many single mothers, who in the absence of a partner have made food their co-parent, their lover, or their friend. Here are some things that I do to reward myself. I keep Epsom Salts in the house for a pre-bed bath. I make sure I have a good book to read. Every so often I treat myself to a trashy magazine, a pedicure, or an afternoon movie. I go to bed early (yes, that can be a reward). I give myself a facial. I lie on the grass and read the cartoons from The New Yorker. I call a friend.
Non-Edible Rewards for Partners, Lovers & Spouses
The age-old act of romance is bringing someone you love chocolates. But is it really romantic to give someone confections that can make them overweight or fall into a sugar coma? Now, isn’t that an enticing image? Candy is so fleeting. How about giving your sweetheart a foot massage, a love letter, a hand-packed healthy lunch with a note on the napkin, a complaint-free day, a valentine on a day other than February 14th, a drawn bath wit bath oils, a clean house, or an attentive listening ear. All of these other things are more likely to be remembered.
When we eliminate food as a reward, we can get pretty creative. We all deserve rewards but let’s see what happens when we don’t eat those rewards.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 2:50:24 PM | 12 COMMENTS
THURSDAY, JULY 23, 2009
Losing Weight Can Be as Simple as Breathing In
Over the years, I have heard every excuse for why people can’t exercise - arthritis, tendonitis, bursitis, plantar fasciitis. You name it, I’ve heard it! I’ve also helped people look for appropriate forms of exercise that would help them, not harm them. Substitution is always better than elimination. It’s better for the runner to walk than to sit idle. It’s better for the weight lifter to do yoga than to give up. But one of the most effective forms of exercise that can be done by anyone despite what itis they might have is breathing. We were born doing it and we’ll do it until the moment we die. Yet few of us realize what a powerful and effective tool it can be in our efforts to lose weight.
Why is breathing so terrific? Keep reading.
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Pranayama is a Sanskrit word meaning "restraint of the prana or breath". The word is composed of two Sanskrit words, “Prāna” (life force or vital energy, particularly pertaining to the breath) and "āyāma" (to suspend or restrain). It is often translated as “control of the life force. Yogis make a whole practice of learning how to breathe properly. Most of us take breathing for granted. We assume that we already know everything there is to know about how to breathe.
How Will Breathing Help Me?
For one, breathing brings oxygen to all of your cells. If you’re an emotional eater constantly looking to fill up on food, perhaps you haven’t considered that you might actually be starving, but not for food, for air. I recall meeting a woman who lost a significant amount of weight. When I questioned how she did it she replied, “I simply added in a breathing practice.” More oxygen to your cells definitely means better metabolism; but I get the sense that breathing offered her more than just a simple miracle cure. Breathing reduces tension, helps you feel centered, lowers blood pressure, calms your mind. Having increased sources of relaxation makes it easier not to rely on food for comfort and to make better food choices overall.
A simple breath practice also begins to condition your body so that it can be prepared for other kinds of exercise. Your lungs expand and become more accustomed to being full of air instead subsisting on the tiny sips of air that most of us shallow breathers take.
How to Breathe
The two things you learn how to do as soon as you’re born are breathe and eat, in that order. Maybe when we don’t breath so well, we rely on the second skill a lot more. However, by taking five minutes a day to not just breathe, but breathe well, we can completely alter how we feel.
Four Square Breathing
This type of breathing can help you in the midst of an anxiety or panic attack, can be used for meditation, or can simply be used to calm yourself down.
1. Take a deep breath. .
2. Hold it for four seconds.
3. Exhale for four seconds.
4. Do nothing for four seconds. Then, repeat.
Alternate Nostril Breathing
This is a yogic type of breathing that will help you relax, achieve a blissful state of being, and balance both sides of your brain. If you do better with a visual aid there are videos on YouTube that will show you how to do this.
1. Breathe in through your left nostril while holding your right nostril closed with your finger for the count of eight.
2. Hold for the count of eight.
3. Breath out through your right nostril while holding your left nostril closed with your finger for the count of eight.
4. Breathe in through your right nostril while holding your left nostril closed with your finger for the count of eight.
5. Hold for the count of eight.
6. Breath out through your left nostril while holding your right nostril closed with your finger for the count of eight.
7. Repeat from step one.
Breath of Fire
Breath of Fire is a part of Kundalini Yoga. It is used to energize and detoxify the body. It produces heat. Please note that you should try this one in small doses and you should stop if you become dizzy.
1. Sit in a comfortable position.
2. Elongate your spine.
3. Close your eyes.
4. Relax your stomach muscles.
5. Now begin to breathe rapidly through the nose with equal emphasis on the inhalation and exhalation. It will be like very fast sniffing. Keep the breath shallow, just at the tip of the nose. Proceed at a comfortable pace and establish a steady rhythm. You will find that the stomach pulses on its own in rhythm to the breath. Continue for one minute.
In less than five minutes a day, you could breathe yourself to a better body, a calmer mind, and a happier disposition. Why not give it a try? It’s as simple as breathing in.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 5:14:56 PM | 6 COMMENTS
WEDNESDAY, JULY 15, 2009
Understand Your Emotions Instead of Eating to Stuff Them Down
If you’re an emotional eater, any emotion can become frightening. First, the emotional eater learns to eat to deal with a particular emotion that seems intolerable. It could be fear, anger, or depression. After some time, any feeling at all will trigger a craving for food.
The more you stuff your feelings with food, the less comfortable you are facing your feelings. Over time, almost any feeling becomes too much. The problem with this is that you’ll often end up feeling stuck in life because you are not using your feelings to guide you and inform your choices.
Emotions don’t need to be feared if you understand the messages behind them. This past weekend I had the good fortune of taking a workshop with horses. It was not a riding workshop but a workshop in which one interacts with the horses in order to access and understand one’s feelings more fully. During the workshop they handed out something called The Emotional Message Chart. It was adapted by Linda Kohanov from Karla McClaren’s “Emotional Genius.” This chart could really help emotional eaters to befriend the feelings they have been trying to run from. I hope you will find it useful.
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Kohanov says, “For horses, emotions are not ‘good’ or ‘bad.’ They recognize that emotions are information, always useful for staying safe and keeping us right with the world. Horses are uncomfortable when emotions are suppressed, ignored, or masked.”
Look at the chart below. Identify your feelings and the messages behind them. Then ask yourself the associated questions (or speak the associated affirmations for the last three emotions on the chart). When you don’t ask and answer these questions they often become intense (you’ll be able to see the intense version on the chart below). It’s this intensity that we try to dial down with the comfort of food.
Emotion: Fear
Message: Intuitive, focused awareness of something that is a threat to our physical, mental, or emotional well-being.
Questions: What is the threat? What action must I take to move to a position of safety?
Intensity: Worry, anxiety, confusion, dulling of senses, panic, terror, disassociation.
Emotion: Vulnerability
Message: Something significant is about to change or be revealed.
Questions: What wants to happen, and how does this seem to threaten the status quo? What behavior, belief, or perception is being challenged?
Intensity: Panic. Anger.
Emotion: Anger
Message: Proper boundaries should be maintained or rebuilt.
Questions: What must be protected? What must be restored? What is the emotion behind the mask and is it directed at me?
Intensity: Rage, fury, shame, guilt (directed at self). Boredom or apathy masks anger that can’t be dealt with, a nonviolent coping mechanism.
(THIS IS PARTICULARLY INTERESTING FOR THE EMOTIONAL EATER BECAUSE I OFTEN HEAR THAT PEOPLE EAT OUT OF BOREDOM. ANOTHER THING THAT IS QUITE COMMON IS THE FEELING APATHY (“I DON’T CARE” OR “WHY BOTHER?”). IF THESE ARE COMMON EMOTIONS FOR YOU, YOU MIGHT WANT TO INQUIRE INTO THE ANGER BEHIND THOSE FEELINGS. PERHAPS YOU ARE ANGRY BECAUSE FOOD IS A STRUGGLE FOR YOU AND DOESN’T SEEM TO BE FOR OTHERS.)
Emotion: Frustration
Message: What I am doing is not working.
Questions: What approach haven’t I tried?
Intensity: Defeat. Despair
(THIS ONE IS SO RELEVANT TO OVEREATERS BECAUSE THE QUESTION BEHIND THE FRUSTRATION IS ‘WHAT APPROACH HAVEN’T I TRIED?’ OFTENTIMES, PEOPLE TRY THE SAME WAY EVEN THOUGH THEY’RE NOT GETTING THE RESULTS THEY WANT (A PATTERN OF ONE DIET AFTER ANOTHER ILLUSTRATES THIS PERFECTLY). A NEW APPROACH IS NEEDED. THAT’S WHY ‘SHRINK YOURSELF’ SEEKS TO HELP PEOPLE STOP THE FRUSTRATING APPROACH OF TRYING THE SAME THING OVER AND OVER. IT OFFERS A NEW AND DIFFERENT WAY.)
Emotion: Sadness
Message: Restores flow to the psyche when loss is imminent and in our best interest.
Questions: What must be released? What must be rejuvenated?
Intensity: Despair. Despondence.
Emotion: Grief
Message: No choice about releasing something, the loss or death has already occurred.
Questions: What must be mourned?
Intensity: Depression
Emotion: Depression
Message: Stagnation; the stop sign of the soul.
Questions: Where has my energy gone? Where is it now? What new direction gives me energy?
Intensity: Loss of self or of life’s purpose, physical illness, suicidal urge.
Emotion: Suicidal Urge
Message: The life being lived is endangering body and soul at such extreme levels that it will cause permanent damage.
Questions: What must end now? What must be killed? What can no longer be tolerated in my psyche?
Intensity: Soul death. Physical death.
Emotion: Happiness
Message: Happiness can only flow freely when you allow all of your emotional energies to flow.
Questions (AFFIRMATION): Thank you for this joyful celebration.
Intensity: Merriment, gaiety, hope, delight, wonder, playfulness, invigoration.
Emotion: Joy
Message: Joy will seek you out if you let it move in its own time and its own way—not in yours.
Questions (AFFIRMATION): Thank you for this radiant moment!
Intensity: Expansion, communion, inspiration, splendor, radiance, bliss.
Emotion: Contentment
Message: Be willing to challenge yourself and risk failure. Real contentment comes from real accomplishments.
Questions (AFFIRMATION): Thank you for renewing my faith in myself.
Intensity: Enjoyment, satisfaction, self-respect, renewal and fulfillment.
(THIS ONE IS ALWAYS PARTICULARLY RELEVANT TO OUR WORK HERE AT ‘SHRINK YOURSELF’. WHEN YOU ARE WILLING TO CHALLENGE YOURSELF AND RISK FAILURE, YOU WILL FIND A NEW WAY TO APPROACH OVEREATING, BINGE EATING, EMOTIONAL EATING, OR FOOD ADDICTION. THEN, YOU WILL FIND YOUR FAITH IN YOURSELF RENEWED AND YOU WILL BE CONTENT.)
Play with the messages in this chart to better understand your emotions. Your emotions will become important tools that will serve to guide you instead of menaces that need to be eaten away. (For more information on working with horses go to www.equineenergetix.com )
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 4:58:39 PM | 8 COMMENTS
THURSDAY, JULY 09, 2009
Learn from a Former Shrink Yourself Member's Success
Each person’s triumph over emotional eating looks similar on the one hand, unique on the other. There are always common themes to how someone heals a pattern of emotional eating despite their specific details. No matter what the specifics are we can all learn from listening and sharing, honestly, with one another. Here are some powerful points I'd like to share from an interview with a former Shrink Yourself member.
Accept Yourself Wherever You Are
Jan had done well working to overcome a pattern of emotional eating but she was still not the exact weight that she wanted to be. She would have liked to be about ten pounds less but it seemed the scale wouldn’t budge. She had two choices. She could beat herself up about this, or she could accept herself in a more loving way. It took a while, but Jan decided to accept herself at a slightly larger size than she was comfortable with. Doing this freed up her mind to enjoy life a little more. There was no longer a dark cloud of shame and disgust veiling her days.
Live in the Solution, Not the Problem
Sometimes, accepting where you are can open the door to a new and often simpler way. By no longer focusing on the problem so much, Jan was able to find her way to a solution that worked for her. She read a book called, “Mindless Eating” by Brian Wansink Ph.D. In the book Dr. Wansink talks about how people eat without thinking about it. He describes inviting people to a dinner where the soup bowls were rigged to keep filling themselves up with more soup. The guests kept eating and eating despite the bottomless bowl. He also invited people to a movie theater where some were given big bags of popcorn and others small ones. No matter what the size of the bag, everyone finished what they were given. Not to mention that the popcorn was two weeks old! The bottom line of his book is that we eat mindlessly. A tip that he gives is that if you eat just 20% less, your mind won’t register that you’re less full, and you will lose weight. Jan decided to give this a try. If she took out ten nuts to eat from a bag, she put two back in, and ate eight. If she took a scoop of tuna salad, she took one tablespoon out and put it back in the container. It didn’t take much effort, but in about six months she had lost most of those last few pounds that didn’t want to come off and felt really great about her body. We all need little tips and tricks. If we focus on the problem too much, we sometimes miss a solution that will work for us. By sharing these solutions with each other, we can try different things until we find something that resonates with us.
Small Steps Still Make a Big Difference
Jan was able to leave a lot of emotional eating behind by finding other ways to deal with uncomfortable feelings. She found that she was still having emotional eating episodes some of the time, but not all of the time. And that is good enough. Remember, it’s normal to reach for the comfort of food once in a while. It only becomes a problem when eating becomes the only solution you have to deal with your emotions. If you use food twenty out of twenty times, it’s emotional eating. If you use food one out of twenty times, its not.
Don’t expect perfection. Just try your best. Small steps really do make a big difference.
Be Interested in Something Other Than Food & Weight
Many people share that an obsession with food can take every bit of their time and energy (and even their money). Jan shared that she had always been interested in finding ways to raise awareness about human rights issues. As a teacher, she did this with her students. Recently, she has helped to cultivate awareness about a hospital in the Congo called Heal Africa (www.healafrica.org) that helps rape victims heal from a condition call fistula. If you find yourself overly concerned with your weight, volunteer your time, find a cause, or reawaken a dormant dream.
Success doesn’t mean perfection. It doesn’t mean never using food for comfort. It just means showing up for yourself and taking small steps with the trust that they will get you to where you want to go.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 6:39:19 AM | 4 COMMENTS
WEDNESDAY, JULY 01, 2009
The Missing Link to Getting Slim for Summer
Summer is here, whether or not we feel ready for it. On New Year’s Day many people start to worry about getting slim for swimsuit season. Then, on the first day of spring they might start to get panicked. By the time summer actually hits, if a certain goal hasn’t been reached, it’s easy to throw in the towel and just wait for next year. But next year it can be the same thing all over again. Even if you’re not as slim as you’d like to be for the summer, there’s still hope.
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Losing weight requires a delicate balance. It requires a balance between taking actions that will help you get to your goal and accepting yourself exactly where you are today. This balance of acceptance and moving forward is the missing link to getting slim this summer no matter where you are today. So, how do we do that if summer has descended and we’re still not happy with how we look and feel?
1. NEXT SUMMER IS TOO LATE
Being a perfectionist about your weight always does more harm than good. It paves the way to black-and-white thinking where you’re likely to give up for this year and decide to eat ice-cream cones every night until next year. Summer is actually a perfect time to take small steps towards your goal. It’s an easier time of year to be physically active. It’s an easier time of year to eat fresh fruits, simple grilled meats and salads. And it can be an easier time of year to relax and that means less emotional eating.
2. ACCEPT YOURSELF NOW
No matter what you look like in a bathing suit you can love and accept yourself as you are. Your value is not determined by what your body looks like. The more you talk to yourself in a loving, kind and accepting way the easier it will be to take those small steps towards changing your behavior for the better. Talking to yourself harshly and critically only feeds that black-and-white thinking that leads to emotional eating.
Progress is more important than perfection. You don’t have to be perfect for summer, you just have to keep moving forward.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 10:42:23 AM | 12 COMMENTS
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 24, 2009
4 Ways We Contribute to One Another's Unhealthy Relationships with Food
The other day while waiting at the register in a local pharmacy I saw the cover of one of those trashy tabloids that showed a bunch of actresses and models in their bathing suits from the rear view. Most of the comments were talking about the women’s cellulite as though it was the biggest sin since murder. I have to admit I couldn’t stop myself from looking at the glossy pages. And for a moment, I understood how seeing these pictures could definitely make someone throw in the towel with a thought that goes something like this: “If these women who have endless access to trainers and nutritionists can’t get it right, what chance do I have?” However, a little research on cellulite will reveal that it’s a naturally occurring part of MOST women’s bodies. If you have cellulite, you are the norm, not the exception. Why should you feel bad about something that is a normally occurring part of having a human body?
The fact is that we shouldn’t feel bad, but most of us do. We contribute to one another’s bad relationships with food and with our bodies in subtle and profound ways. Take a look at the list below to see how we contribute to other people’s eating disorders:
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1.Being the Media’s Puppet
Do you let film, television, and magazines dictate how you think you should look? Do you compare yourself to actresses and models? Depending on the era, different body types have been en vogue—waifish, voluptuous, zaftig, muscular. Body types change like fashion and we neither can adapt nor should we have to. We don’t have to fall prey to how the media says we should look. For example, I have worn wedge shoes for years. A couple of years ago they came into fashion and everyone assumed that I was wearing them for that reason. I wore them before and I plan on wearing them even if they become passé. You can decide what you want to look like no matter what’s on the pages of your favorite magazine. How can you become more immune to the effects of the media?
2. Commenting on Other People’s Weight
Something that is often done with good intention but is nevertheless damaging is commenting on people’s weight. Even when the comment is complimentary, the results can still be destructive. I know many women who struggled with anorexia. In the throes of their eating disorders, many reported that they received so many compliments despite being unhealthily thin. Telling someone that they’ve lost or gained weight contributes to a fixation on weight and food. Share with someone how happy you are to see them or how grateful you are that they made time for you. Taking the focus away from weight helps us all in the long run. Can you stop commenting on weight changes and appearances in yourself and others?
3. Ragging on Ourselves
It’s so common to hear people call themselves fat or poke fun at their bodies that we have become desensitized to it. Talking negatively about our bodies greases the slope for everyone. It contributes to a spirit of competition and comparison. I live in Los Angeles where a lot of people will say they need to lose weight if they’re not the “required” ten pounds underweight. I often find myself getting angry wondering where exactly they think they should lose the weight…perhaps off their internal organs. If we can all learn to speak about our bodies with love and acceptance, then it will be so much easier to treat ourselves lovingly with good food and exercise. Stirring up all this negativity and hatred just sends us into the arms of food. Can you stop talking negatively about your body?
4. Good Food – Bad Food
Labeling foods good or bad can lead to binges. Every so often certain foods become off limits. When I was in college everyone avoided fats and lived on carbs. Now, carbs are evil and fat is your friend. When we avoid doing the work of knowing which foods are best for our particular bodies and instead get on the good food/bad food band wagon, we can get very confused. We can feel self-righteous when we are eating the “good foods.” And we can get judgmental of others when they are eating the “bad foods.” I’ve seen people glare at someone for saying “yes” to a piece of baguette with their bowl of soup. Food can almost become like the bad-boy lover. Everyone tells you to get away from him, but you just can’t seem to resist. When you take away the taboo element of it all, everything gets easier. How can you stop yourself from labeling foods good or bad?
Many of us have done these things with good intentions. Many of us have had these things done to us and suffered because of it. And there’s no question that all of these opinions and ideas are affecting how the young people in our society think about themselves. However, we can make it easier for ourselves, and others, by becoming more conscious. We often think that the answer to all of this is thinking our way into right actions. For example, I need to lose weight so that means I should eat less, and so I’ll do it and that will be that. But it doesn’t work that way. We actually need to act our way into right thinking. In other words, by changing simple actions (like the things listed above) you will begin to think in a different and more empowered way—in a way that helps you accept yourself and others more freely. When you do that, those images on the covers of magazines will not be nearly as compelling as who a person is and what they have to contribute. Wouldn’t it be nice if cellulite was no longer considered a cover story and was instead replaced with modern day stories of courage, compassion, and creativity?
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 9:56:08 AM | 9 COMMENTS
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 17, 2009
3 Reasons More and More People Are Addicted to Food
Overeating and obesity are often blamed on things like lack of willpower, metabolism, or genetics. However, more and more studies (including those in animal research) are revealing that food addiction is real. You might wonder why more and more people seem to be addicted to food these days. Weight issues are on the rise and if we look closely we might be able to determine why. The answer might help us find solutions for ourselves. Since it can be tempting to focus more on the problem than on the solution I will offer a solution to each problem here.
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PROBLEM ONE: FOOD ADDITIVES MAKE US FAT
Studies continue to reveal that additives in food make us fat. Certain foods, particularly fast foods, can be engineered to make us crave them. David Kessler’s book, The End of Overeating, shows us how we can become hardwired to eat large quantities of foods that are dangerous to our health. The lure of these types of food has us getting up in our pajamas to go to our nearest drive-thru. In other words, we have become more and more physically addicted to food, the same way we could become addicted to nicotine or drugs.
SOLUTION
Cravings are almost never for broiled chicken, steamed broccoli, or slices of fresh peaches. It’s not that those foods can’t be delicious but cravings are usually for things like cookies, doughnuts, baked goods, chips, etc. Clear your diet of unhealthy foods. The closer a food is to its natural source the less likely you’ll be to crave that food in an unnatural way.
PROBLEM TWO: LIFE IS MORE STRESSFUL
The faster pace of life these days affects our weight. For one, when we’re stressed and rushed we’re more likely to grab unhealthy foods on the go. Secondly, constantly being overstimulated keeps our nervous systems in an activated state. By not letting our bodies shut down and relax our cortisol levels (cortisol is a hormone produced by our adrenal glands) get heightened. Elevated cortisol levels make it difficult to take off extra weight, especially around one’s belly. Food, especially carbohydrates and sweets, can give us a little dose of calm that our adrenal glands no longer know how to create. Therefore, we become physically dependent on the calm that food can provide.
SOLUTION
In simple terms, relax. Shut off the TV, the computer, and the radio. Allow yourself a little bit of quiet everyday. Breathe deeply. You’d be amazed how many people simply forget to breathe. A friend of mine told me that she takes three deep breaths every time she goes to the bathroom. This allows her at least a certain amount of deep breaths per day. Adopt a meditation practice. Meditation has been shown to lower elevated cortisol levels. If you want a simple way to shut down your body, close your eyes and notice if your eyes are still moving beneath your lids. Follow the movements until they slow down. As you do, a feeling of calm will wash over you.
PROBLEM THREE: TALKING DOESN’T TEACH US ANYTHING
In modern times it’s easy to believe that we are more emotionally open and mature. But just because we talk openly about almost anything on talk shows and blogs it’s not necessarily the case. However, the truth is that talking about things doesn’t necessarily teach us how to deal with them. For the most part, we are just as confused as ever about how to handle our feelings. This leads us to looking towards food for comfort more and more frequently. We soothe and nurture ourselves by eating. This is why we are emotionally addicted to food.
SOLUTION:
The best thing you can do to avoid eating is to understand your feelings. Feelings are like weather - they happen and then they pass. But the problem is that we take our feelings very seriously and that’s when they get overwhelming. This sends us searching for the comfort of food. Simply learn what you need when you feel angry, sad, lonely, frustrated, or anxious. Then, you’ll be better equipped to face almost anything without food. Just as knowing the right hat and shoes to wear in a snowstorm can make it so much more bearable, learning how to deal with your feelings will enable you to turn to food less frequently. Remember, feelings aren’t facts. They don’t last that long.
There are so many comforting components to eating that it’s understandable that we’d become addicted to that kind of comfort. Food is so accessible these days. It’s everywhere and there is a heightened focus on food. But if you focus on the solution more than the problem you’ll find yourself recovering your power and becoming the master of what and when you eat.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 4:44:03 PM | 12 COMMENTS
TUESDAY, JUNE 09, 2009
The Darker Side of Emotional Eating: Overcoming Bulimia & Other Eating Disorders
Our site was created to help people overcome Emotional Eating. We wanted people to have all the information and tools they need to lose weight and master their relationship with food. Emotional eating affects so many of us but what you need to know is that there are darker sides of emotional eating and bulimia is one of them.
Bulimia is an eating disorder where a person consumes a huge amount of food and then attempts to purge it from their system by vomiting, taking laxatives or exercising excessively. The pattern itself can become addictive and despite promises made to oneself that each time will be the last time, the behavior continues. Bingeing and purging often leads to feelings of shame, guilt and self-hatred, not mention what it can do to your body and teeth.
I often tell the people that we work with here at Shrink Yourself that using food may provide a few moments of relief or comfort but it can never get you what you really need. And in the same way, purging might give you a symbolic feeling that you are wiping the slate clean or getting rid of something you don’t want. But it can never take away the things that you are really trying to get rid of for example, anxiety, fear, regret, sadness, abuse, etc.
This week I interviewed a woman who struggled with bulimia for many years. I thought it would be good for you to hear, in her words, what her experiences were so that you might find some strength and hope on your own journey.
To read the interview click here:
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Q: How old were you when it started?
A: I started experimenting when I was about 15 and then really began when I was 17.
Q: How long did it go on for?
A: The worst of it was for about 6 years. After that it took years to stop all together. I probably didn’t stop completely until my early thirties. I am now forty. As recent as two years ago I had a one time slip.
Q: How often did you binge and purge?
A: At first it was a few times a week and then every day. Then for a period of time it progressed to 3 times a day.
Q: Why did you binge and purge?
A: To escape my life. To not feel my feelings. To avoid conflicts. To express my anger (the only problem with that is that I took it out on myself because I was unable to express my anger to the appropriate people in my life). To hurt myself because I was used to being hurt and neglected. To repeat on some level the abuse I experienced as a kid. To numb myself. To think of nothing but food so that I would have some relief from emotional pain (I didn't realize though that it was causing another kind of pain). To attain perfection because I felt interminably not good enough. To control my environment. To attempt order because I grew up in an atmosphere of tremendous chaos. It gave me an illusion of control. To feel "clean.” I felt dirty and bad. I was symbolically trying to rid my self of all the "bad" in me. To stay connected to my mother (She had an eating problem. She was very overweight) I didn't want to be fat like her. I was disgusted by her weight but I felt tied to her and scared to separate and our common obsession and fixation on food was something we could share. To feel masterful and good at SOMETHING. Because of very low self-esteem I was going to have a good body and be faultless in my eating. I could be perfect and not let one "bad" thing go in my body. If I ate something bad I’d get rid of it. To avoid my life and my career. A place to put all my time and energy. Feeling afraid and unable to pursue my dreams I needed something to absorb me.
Without emotional support in my life and with too much shame to share myself with others food was used for nurturance and self-soothing. It was something reliable that would always be there for me. It was a safe place to express want and need, I could take my fill of food. I could take all I wanted and not risk rejection. With people I felt like I wanted and needed too much. But with food I could take as much as I wanted or needed.
Q: Did you promise yourself each time that it would be the last?
A: Yes. Every time I swore to myself that I’d never do it again.
Q: How did you try to stop?
A: By avoiding "bad foods.” By exercising thinking that if I felt fit and trim I wouldn't try to manage my weight with bingeing and purging (but it wasn't about weight. On the surface yes, but the truth is I wasn’t even trying to lose weight). Also with psychotherapy and Overeaters Anonymous.
Q: What things were most effective in helping you stop?
A: Psychotherapy, more specifically a very loving therapist, body work, and yoga.
Q: What were some signs that you were getting better?
A: Curiosity and desire for things in the world. Less attention and focus on food and what and where and when I would eat. Eating too much and feeling a sense of acceptance instead of panic. Flexibility around food and being less rigid. Being open to more social situations where I wouldn’t be able to control my food.
Q: What would you tell other people that are binging and purging?
A: Please don't do it (easier said than done I know). Please stop hurting yourself. I know personally how hard it is not to (even if consciously you don't want to) and I have absolutely no judgment of anyone who engages in the behavior but I learned the hard way how much damage you can do to yourself. I destroyed my teeth and had to have a complete reconstruction. It was painful and costly and took several years to complete. I felt like my bulimia took years from my life and ten years to heal from. It is something I have had to take responsibility for but I have often felt robbed and cheated of a lot of time. I don't think most people who binge and purge realize the possible consequences.
I guess I would just say that if you are bingeing and purging please get help. Please find someone to talk to. It’s too hard to do alone.
If you struggle with bulimia, I hope that something here sheds some light for you on your life. Beware of a voice in your head that says anything like “I might throw up once in awhile but I’m not as bad as her” or “I have it under control.” That’s a sign that you’re trying to justify your behavior and trick yourself into believing it’s okay to continue bingeing and purging. Emotional eaters find themselves turning to food more and more once it has been installed as a coping mechanism, and bulimics find themselves purging more and more as life becomes stressful. Getting help works. You are not alone and you don’t have to face this by yourself.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 6:43:55 PM | 14 COMMENTS
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 03, 2009
3 Steps to Build Your Own Emotional Eating Rescue Kit
Emotional Eating can get triggered at any time of day or night. You get an upsetting phone call, text or email and suddenly you’re starving. You’re out to dinner with friends and you feel left out of the conversation and dessert immediately seems like the perfect escape. Your husband and kids have gone to bed and you want some special time all to yourself but don’t know what would feel rewarding besides a few stolen cookies and a handful of chips. Emotional eating is using food to numb, comfort or reward one’s self. It is using food, not just as nutrition but also as a coping mechanism for life.
Therefore the answer is both simple and difficult. It’s simple because if you deal with your feelings head on, you won’t need food to help you along. It’s difficult because dealing with feelings head on can be frightening and overwhelming, particularly when you don’t yet have the skills to do so which is what makes the quick fix of food so enticing.
To begin to face your feelings you can build yourself an Emotional Eating Rescue Kit. This is something that you can have fun with. Just follow these three simple steps:
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Step One: Identify Your Top Three Emotions That Trigger Emotional Eating
For a few weeks take the time to observe yourself. Notice which emotions send you to the drive thru lane of your nearest fast food joint. Look for the times of day that you overeat. Some people binge in the afternoon and others do so at night. Look for places where you overeat for instance in restaurants, at family gatherings, at work, or at home. Does anger, sadness, loneliness, or boredom make you most hungry? You can keep a journal or calendar until you notice some regular patterns. When you do, pick the top three feelings, times, or places that you emotionally eat.
Step Two: Build Your Rescue Kit
Get a shoebox or a big manila envelope. You can use a drawer in your night table or even the glove compartment of your car. Collect things that address the feelings that trigger you to eat. You can put inspirational writings in your kit, passages from a spiritual book, or aromatherapy, or a CD with songs that shift your mood. You can put the phone number of a friend who will hear you out. You can put pictures or images that soothe you. You can put anything in there that will help remind you to address the real feeling instead of trying to eat it away.
Step Three: Use Your Rescue Kit
Your rescue kit will only work if you use it. Practice using your kit. Develop it so that it really does address the feelings that trigger episodes of emotional eating. Don’t be afraid to use trial and error. This is about getting better and better at attending to your real needs. You can even create a pocket sized rescue kit that you keep in your purse or in your desk at work. When your emotions trigger you to eat, you can always excuse yourself, go to the restroom with your rescue kit and keep yourself present to what’s really going on for you.
Remember when you eat, you abandon yourself. By eating you don’t address your real needs, hurts, and concerns. As a result many people report feeling stuck in their lives. But when you begin to address your true feelings your life starts to propel forward. If you’re a Shrink Yourself member you have already learned to look for the underlying feeling behind the urge to binge or overeat. You may even use the Hunger Coach regularly (This is a specially designed program that you use on your computer or phone to help you understand a craving in the moment when you have it). However, there are going to be times when getting to the computer isn’t always an option. When the power is out, or your internet is down, or you’re traveling in a third world country you can still take steps to slow down, stay aware, and hold your own hand through your feelings, without the escape that food provides.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 7:35:18 PM | 24 COMMENTS
WEDNESDAY, MAY 27, 2009
If Not Overeating, Then What?
So many overeaters that I talk to say, “I don’t know what I would do if I didn’t stuff my feelings down with food.” Dr. Gould says, “If you really want to know what’s bothering you, stop eating, and it will all surface.” Gosh, the idea of that can be scary because many of us emotional eaters don’t know what we’d do if we stopped using food to deal with life. Of course, that’s what we’re all learning here but it still can be frightening. As the end of the school year approaches and there are graduations and summer vacations to plan with less money than ever, I invite you to slow down for a few minutes and breathe. To help you along, this week I thought I’d write something less clinical, and more reflective.
If I didn’t keep stuffing my feelings with food I would….
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If I didn’t keep stuffing my feelings with food I would….
*Cry until I got it all out of my system.
*Start asking for what I want.
*Pursue an abandoned dream.
*Answer honestly when someone asks me how I’m doing.
*Ask for forgiveness from someone I've hurt.
*See that I’m not satisfied in my relationship & work to make it better or finally make a change.
*Admit I don’t (and won't) have all the answers.
*Ask for help when I feel overwhelmed.
* Get more rest.
*Admit I’m angry and scream or punch a pillow.
*Mourn the loss of a dream, a relationship, a job, or a loved one.
*Need to meditate or pray more.
*Stand up for myself.
*Not always say “yes,” when I want to say “no.”
*Accept that I’m only human.
*Exercise my emotional muscles.
*Learn to accept I’m not perfect and am bound to make mistakes.
*Let the past go and begin again.
*Learn something new.
*Seek out more supportive friends.
*Face the fact that I’m not as brave as I let people think.
*Stop pretending I’m not sad.
*Reach out.
*Accept that it’s hard to be a parent.
*Realize I don’t know how.
*Create new possibilities.
*Never give up on myself.
*Try, try again.
*Be gentle with myself.
*Love myself more.
We turn to food for comfort because it’s quick and easy. But by doing so we postpone taking the actions that would propel our lives forward. What would you do if you weren’t using food to numb out. The same people that come into the program saying that they don’t know what they would do if they stopped overeating, often leave the program exclaiming how their lives opened up in the most unexpected and delightful ways. Start by doing a ten-minute writing exercise where you answer the question:
If I didn’t keep stuffing my feelings with food I would….
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 2:35:51 PM | 14 COMMENTS
THURSDAY, MAY 21, 2009
3 Essential Things to Remember If You’re Trying to Lose Weight
By now most of you know that our main belief system here at Shrink Yourself is that the majority of overeating is a result of emotional eating - using food to cope with feelings. Therefore, when you learn to address your feelings (as we teach you to do) your desire for food naturally diminishes. However, since the body is an integrated system in which your physical health can affect your emotional health, and your emotional health can affect your physical health, weight loss must be approached from many angles. If you really have worked on your emotional eating and you’re still not getting the results you want there might be something physiological going on. Consider the things below:
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1. Food: What Kind of Food Are You Eating?
Hippocrates said, “Let your food be your medicine.” I often find it funny that most doctors will ask if you’re taking any medications on a regular basis but they won’t inquire into what you’re eating or drinking. Obviously, food affects your physical health but it also affects your emotional health. If you’re consuming a lot of caffeine, you might feel anxious or have trouble sleeping. If you’re consuming a lot of sugar or simple carbohydrates you could have a sudden surge of energy followed by a crash or bout of brain fog. Also, if you’re low in serotonin you may crave sugar and/or simple carbohydrates because of the quick jolt of serotonin they give you.
Food allergies or sensitivities can also make digestion difficult and that can have you hold on to extra weight. These days allergies to wheat, soy, dairy and corn are very common.
Don’t just pay attention to how much you’re eating but also remember to focus on the quality of your food and how particular foods affect your levels of exhaustion, your ability to fall asleep and stay asleep, your mood, and your focus. Sometimes eliminating certain foods as an experiment can be really illuminating.
2. Vitamins, Minerals & Hormones : Are you Deficient In Any of Them?
People who don’t get adequate vitamins and minerals can have a hard time losing weight.
This week one of our members reported that after discovering she was deficient in Vitamin D (55% of obese people are deficient in Vitamin D), her doctor prescribed the amount she needed and she immediately started to lose weight. Not only that but her depression lifted and she was finally able to get adequate rest.
Omega 3 & 6 fatty acids can help you lose weight, too. The addition of good fats (for instance a fish oil supplement – I recommend Nordic Naturals brand which doesn’t repeat at all) like salmon, avocado, flax meal, and olive oil can help you to metabolize fat more efficiently
Hormones affect your weight as well. If you’re eating well and exercising and you still haven’t lost weight you might want to consider having your hormone levels checked. Thyroid levels (always ask to have your thyroid antibodies checked in addition to T3, T4 and TSH levels) and cortisol levels should be monitored. If you have hypothyroidism and take thyroid supplements pay particular attention to your cortisol levels. Supplemental thyroid hormone is like the gas in your car and cortisol is like the gas pedal. If you’re taking thyroid supplement yet don’t have enough cortisol in your body, it’s like having enough gas in your tank but not having any way to get it into your engine.
3. Stress: Do you Know How to Relax, Restore and Rejuvenate Your Body?
Human beings are physiologically equipped with a complex system for dealing with stress. Our adrenal glands control our fight or flight instinct. Animals in the wild, when exposed to stress, know how to shake off their experiences and return to a neutral state. We don’t know how to do this nearly as well. Our bodies can’t really tell the difference between the stress of being chased by a lion in the jungle and being cut off by a fellow driver on the freeway.
In modern day society we’re faced with constant stressors and never given the chance to restore ourselves. Traffic. Sirens. Loud noises. Tragedy on the news. Deadlines. Multi-tasking. Sleep Deprivation. Screaming children.
Prolonged exposure to stress can affect many of your body’s systems and inhibit your ability to lose weight. Learn how to relax. Shut your body down. Get enough rest. Find some quiet. By learning how to relax, your body can restore itself and it will be better equipped to digest food and metabolize fat.
Remember, it’s essential to look at how you might be using food to cope with feelings. But some of the foods you’re eating can be creating bad feelings, too. Always approach health and wellness from both physical and emotional angles.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 6:25:06 PM | 12 COMMENTS
WEDNESDAY, MAY 13, 2009
How Long Do I Have to Wait to See Change?
Diets that promise results in thirty days usually get a lot of attention. They appeal to the part of us that wants instant gratification. We want results and we want them now. The problem with change is that it doesn’t ever happen fast enough for our liking. And we get frustrated and defeated. Real change takes time and therefore a whole lot of patience.
If you’re doing everything you can to address your health; eating well, exercising regularly and dealing with your emotional well being how do you keep pressing on even when you’re not getting results as quickly as you’d like? Here are a few suggestions to help you keep on, keeping on.
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DON’T COMPARE YOURSELF TO OTHERS
We all change at different rates. And what it takes for each of us to change is unique. There is an expression that says, “compare and despair.” In other words, when you look at your life, body, or rate of change compared to someone else's you could be setting yourself up for disappointment. It’s unavoidable to compare ourselves to other people but we can decide how much focus we want to put on those comparisons.
KEEP YOUR EYE ON YOUR SUCCESSES
You don’t only succeed when you reach your goal weight or have a certain amount of muscle tone. But we can fool ourselves into believing that arriving is the only mark of success. You actually succeed in little ways every day. And the more you see these little successes, the easier it is to stay on the right path. You succeed when you avoid a certain food or eat less than you normally would. You succeed when you walk for an extra five minutes. And when it comes to emotional eating, you succeed every time you face a feeling instead of numbing it with food.
ACCEPTANCE
Finally, acceptance is an important quality to cultivate in this whole process. If you can accept yourself where you’re at, for better or for worse, it’s easier to keep going. You are your own person, with your own path to success. The more you stay with yourself, in the exact place you are, the better it will be.
Even when you’re not seeing change as quickly as you might like, you’re still changing in little ways every day. And those tiny changes, if you stick with them, will create the results you’re looking for in the long run. It’s not about arriving any way, it’s about having each day be governed by awareness, powerful choices and bold actions. When you change what you do, over time who you are changes, too. If you watch the leaves in Spring on a continuous slow motion camera, you’ll see all the micro adjustments that have to happen for a bud to sprout, and then for that bud to turn into a blossom, and then for that blossom to turn into a leaf. Sometimes, you forget to notice and it seems as though the leaves have emerged overnight. The transformation you’re undergoing might happen in tiny steps too but the results will be equally beautiful.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 12:56:54 PM | 8 COMMENTS
WEDNESDAY, MAY 06, 2009
Overeating: How to Avoid Falling Off the Wagon
Overeating is as commonplace as drinking bottled water. Portions are bigger in restaurants. We eat out all the time. Fattening foods are synonymous with good times. And it’s acceptable to bring a snack almost anywhere you go. We could potentially be eating almost all of the time if we’re not careful. Cutting back can feel impossible in a world where food is so readily accessible. How do you reign yourself in when it can be so easy to spiral out?
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First of all we need balance. Let’s think of a balance or scale. It’s never fixed and steady. A true balance (like one used to measure food or a doctor’s scale) is always tipping back and forth slightly. Our weight and how we manage food is the same. We always need to make tiny adjustments. The first way we can do this is with an actual scale.
The Scale (and how to use it)
Many of us come to fear the scale because we don’t like what it tells us or because it’s too easy to get obsessed with it. One member told me that she would jump on and off the scale, sometimes multiple times an hour. Obviously that’s just too much but the scale can actually be a useful tool.
Numbers don't have to be something to be afraid of. For example, when you drive the car it would be dangerous to look at the speedometer the whole time you're driving because you need your eyes on the road. But it's important to have it there because every once in awhile you need an accurate read on how fast you're really going. This can also apply to a food scale that lets you know how much of a portion you're actually eating since normal sized portions have started to look small to our eyes.
I can gain weight very quickly. I don't weigh myself often mostly because I don't have a scale but I’m starting to see that it’s a good idea for me to get on once a week or once every two weeks so that I don't have a surprise. A surprise can lead to defeat and a case of the “why bothers.” Don't fixate on the scale. Simply use it in moderation as a tool to know where you're at.
The ‘Why Bothers” (and what to do about them)
Once the number on the scale gets too intimidating you can get a case of the “why bothers.” The “why bothers” tell you things like “why bother restricting yourself you’re already fat,” or “why bother eating less when you’re only at this restaurant once in awhile,” or “you’re never going to lose the weight you want so why bother?” Be on guard for a case of the “why bothers.” They can fool you into overeating and sabotage your best intentions. When we get defeated it’s hard to make good choices we eat more and more. Get stronger than this voice by talking back to it. Remind yourself that you do in fact care. When you remember that it’s much easier to make the effort.
Don’t Wait Till Monday (why that’s way too long)
A common mistake that we make to justify overeating is the minute we make a mistake we throw the towel in and tell ourselves “screw it, I’ll start again next Monday.” It doesn’t matter if it’s only Tuesday at the time. We fool ourselves into thinking that we can only eat well if we start in the morning, or on Monday, or on the first of the month or New Year’s. This isn’t true. Think of that scale again and all the tiny adjustments it needs to stay in balance. You are no different. If you overeat at lunch, you can undereat at dinner. If you fall off the wagon on Monday night, you can get back on the wagon Tuesday morning. We learned to be overeaters one food choice at a time. And we’ll learn to eat in balance one food choice at a time, too. Your next meal can be your next opportunity to eat in moderation.
Changing a lifetime pattern isn’t easy but if you keep deeming yourself worthy of bothering, don’t fear using the scale as a helpful tool (or other measure like a certain pair of pants or a string around your waist) and get back on the wagon anytime you fall off, you’ll be well on your way to ending overeating.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 2:01:07 PM | 12 COMMENTS
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 29, 2009
Food Addiction & 3 Ways to Recover Your Power
If you’re like me, for years, you might have beaten yourself up believing you didn’t have enough willpower to choose the right foods. However, The End of Overeating, a new book by the former head of the Food and Drug Administration, Dr. David Kessler, explains that certain foods may be choosing you. Anonymous food executives revealed that a particular combination of fat, sugar, and salt makes people crave foods in an uncontrollable way and quite simply you become addicted in much the same way that you can become addicted to nicotine, alcohol, or drugs. When a potato chip advertisement says, ‘no one can eat just one,’ they’re right because they were created with the very intention of you eating as many as possible. Pardon my sarcasm but eating one chip wouldn’t be very good for business, now would it?
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The pleasure seeking parts of the brain get activated by these foods making the mere mention of them trigger an intense craving. Seeing the food on a billboard or commercial sparks those cravings, too. I can relate because years ago I once felt panicked when someone took a fat and sugar laden Krispy Kreme donut away from me (salt is in them too, I just checked the ingredients online). The anticipation of eating the donut already awakened certain neural pathways in my mind and having the fulfillment of the craving denied literally made me crash (and If I remember correctly, maybe even cry). I was physically addicted to the chemical components of the food and I was emotionally addicted to the comfort that the food provided.
Below I copied one question and answer from Dr. Kessler’s interview with The Wall Street Journal. I felt this information was very interesting to those of us who are trying to end our struggles with food addiction and the associated cravings that we face (sometimes over and over again throughout the day). It shows that despite how powerful these foods can be that we do indeed have choices.
WSJ: At times I couldn't decide whether you felt that the overweight were victims or undisciplined. Which is it?
Dr. Kessler: The answer is probably neither. Nobody has explained to people what is going on with them, or given them the tools to cool stimuli. Yes, you are bombarded throughout the day. You respond. And that creates torment for people. But just because we are activated and stimulated doesn't mean that that there aren't things we can do. Yes, their brains are being hijacked. But once we understand what is going on, we can change.
To read the whole interview: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124084009832659309.html
So, how do we change? Well, the change starts in our mind. To recover your power you need:
AWARENESS
Change always starts with awareness. Is the food you’re eating going to hook you? If it’s processed or has ingredients you don’t understand, chances are it could. Since, I know that many of you have children consider that a lot of the foods that are considered “kid friendly” could be making them into food addicts, too. Things like chicken nuggets, frozen pizza, and chips.
TO CHANGE THE WAY YOU LOOK AT THINGS
Dr. Kessler, who was known for his campaign against the tobacco industry shares that the American people had to change how they viewed smoking before people would quit. Simply knowing that it isn’t healthy wasn’t enough. Smoking had to go from being hip and cool to being unattractive. The same thing needs to happen with food. We need to look at a plate of unhealthy, processed food as something that can hurt us. Then, we need to deem ourselves worthy of the best kind of food for our bodies and minds.
ANOTHER SOURCE OF PLEASURE
We look for comfort in food and then become addicted to that kind of comfort for a reason. The reason is that human beings are creatures that like to avoid pain and to feel good. There’s nothing wrong with this per se. However, we’ve become accustomed to wanting to feel good all the time which isn’t very realistic. We must strike a balance between finding real pleasure beyond just the readily accessible, edible kind and tolerating some degree of discomfort.
With the right information, we can all get unhooked from food. Having all the information helps. I'm looking forward to reading Dr. Kessler's book but I already know that food in its simplest form is the most delicious. You’d be surprised how amazing almost any vegetable, meat or fish can be with just good extra virgin olive oil, good sea salt (Maldon is my favorite) and fresh ground pepper.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 1:09:38 AM | 7 COMMENTS
TUESDAY, APRIL 21, 2009
3 Ways to Cope with Job Insecurity (Or Any Other Kind of Insecurity)
Nation-wide layoffs are triggering anxiety in many people. The anxiety is understandable but what you do with it is something else. Sartre said, “Freedom is what you do with what’s been done to you.” One option is to turn to food to deal with your anxiety and for many of us emotional eaters that’s what we’re tempted to do. But there are many other options, too. However, we can fail to see that when we’re in a panic. The key to overcoming emotional eating (whether it’s triggered by job insecurity or anything else for that matter) is to determine what other choices you have.
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My grandmother used to say, “Hope for the best, but expect the worst.” If you haven’t been laid off but are worried you might be, take a few actions.
1. Think About Things Realistically
In the Shrink Yourself program we talk a lot about catastrophe predictions. Catastrophe predictions are the way your mind can take a normal feeling like fear or worry and inflate it. When this happens, normal everyday feelings become too terrible to tolerate and the overwhelming pain of the emotion makes you seek out the comfort of food. When it comes to something as important as your job and the financial security of you and your family, one can understand why you would be scared. But making the fear bigger than it needs to be won’t make it better. If you find yourself getting too anxious, think things through. Is there a realistic threat to your job? If not, then keep on doing a great job and if there is an actual threat, keep reading.
2. Make a Plan
If you answered, “Yes” to the question of whether your job is in jeopardy, then get out a pen and paper and make a plan. Sometimes facing your worst-case scenario is the best answer. If you have a plan in place for what you’ll do if the worst actually happens, then you don’t have to be nearly as afraid. This might include reviewing your financial portfolio, getting your resume re-written, meeting with a headhunter or just getting some much needed support. How can you personally plan ahead?
3. Let it Go
Sometimes the best thing you can do is surrender. You’ve done everything that you can possibly do to insure your job security. You’ve made preparations for what you’d do if you lost your job. And yet you’re still feeling anxious, then find a way to let it go. Look for ways to have fun. A little fun can go a long way. Look for ways to have faith and trust that you will find a way no matter what happens. How can you personally surrender?
In Shrink Yourself Dr. Gould says that the number one reason for emotional eating is a false sense of powerlessness. You might actually be powerless to do anything about your job security. You don’t have to be powerless with regard to how you handle it. You can recover your power, plan ahead, and feel prepared for whatever happens.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 10:18:45 PM | 4 COMMENTS
TUESDAY, APRIL 14, 2009
3 Holes You Might Be Trying to Fill With Food
To fill up with food presupposes that there is an emptiness that longs to be filled. And for many of us there is. Our impulse to fill up with food is an attempt to fill a hole. April is National Emotional Overeating Month. To truly understand emotional overeating one must be willing to bravely look into the abysmal emptiness that so many of us are trying to fill with food, albeit futilely.
When we look at people that are overweight, particularly when that person is us, we can be filled with negative judgments. Amongst all the common stereotypes about overweight people we overlook that an overweight person is likely a person in pain. If we can remember that, we are more likely to approach the issue of weight, for ourselves and others, from a place of curiosity, care, and compassion.
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So, What’s This Hole We’re Trying to Fill With Food?
Sure, we all have a literal hole in us. There is space in our stomachs that food can fill up. But the hole that many of us seek to fill with food can’t be filled no matter how much we stuff in. The hole that we try to fill with food can be:
A VOID
Does your life lack meaning? Do you wonder what your purpose is? Do you go about the tasks of your everyday life wondering what they’re for and what difference they’re actually going to make in the world at large? If so, your hole could be a void. You could be longing to imbue your life with more meaning and mindfulness. Food can’t fill this kind of void. What can fill this kind of void is finding a cause to help with, a craft to be passionate about, or a spiritual practice.
A LOSS
Have you experienced the loss of a loved one? A break-up? A divorce? Has someone in your life lost some part of their functioning to illness or injury? Have you been laid off from a job? If so, your hole could be a loss. You could be missing someone or something. Food can’t quell this longing. It can fill you up momentarily. It can numb you out. But food only delays the necessary work of grieving and getting back to living. Loss is undeniably painful but when you eat you actually prevent yourself from doing the things that would actually be healing. Taking actions like re-membering (putting yourself back together), reaching out for help, and surrendering to the process can all offer real soothing.
A LONELINESS
Do you feel lonely even when in the company of others? Do you long for a connection but aren’t quite sure how to bridge the gap? Do you spend way too much time alone, in hiding, or isolating? If so, your hole could be loneliness. I’m sure you guessed that food can’t help this kind of hole either, but here are some things that can: first, find ways to connect to yourself through prayer, art, spirituality, beauty or nature and then look for ways to fill your life with quality people that make you feel seen, known, loved, and understood.
Part of being alive is tolerating the discomfort of that gnawing, aching emptiness inside ourselves. But on our journey towards recovering from Emotional Overeating, we must always remember that no matter how satisfying it might seem to actually fill that hole inside with something, we deny ourselves of the feeling of real fullness by accepting the quick fix of food.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 9:46:18 PM | 17 COMMENTS
TUESDAY, APRIL 07, 2009
How the Recession Affects Overeating
We are currently experiencing the greatest recession in the past sixty years. There’s no doubt that it affects many aspects of our lives. But do you realize how it affects your overeating, binging, and emotional eating?
There are both positive and negative ways the recession might be affecting what you eat. Let’s take a look at all sides:
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PEOPLE ARE EATING OUT LESS
This is one way that the recession could affect your eating in a positive way. Having less access to disposable income is contributing to people frequenting restaurants much less. When you eat out it’s difficult to know exactly how much fat, sodium, and sugar are in your meal. Portions tend to be larger than what you might eat at home. There is more alcohol, more bread, and more dessert consumed. By eating at home, not only will you save money but you can more closely monitor what you’re eating. One thing to be aware of is that when you’re in the red it can be very tempting to fill up on inexpensive fast food. McDonald’s is advertising their $3 meal deal. Now, more than ever, it’s important to fill your body with food that will be grounding and nutritive so that you can face these trying times with a clear mind.
PEOPLE ARE WORRIED
Emotional eaters are known for catastrophizing. What this means is that your mind has a tendency to imagine the worst case scenario. It means that everyday concerns become huge worries that keep you up at night. When fears become overly inflated it’s more likely that you’ll need to be soothed. And if food is the thing that calms you, your worries about money, job security, and retirement could make you crave food more and more. To combat this, write out a list of your fears. Then, give them a reality check asking yourself how likely it is that your fears will become reality. Finally, create a game plan for what you would do if those fears came true. Are there ways that you can plan ahead to protect yourself from the worst possible outcome?
PEOPLE ARE IN CRISIS
If you’ve been laid off, lost some of your investments or retirement money, or have a spouse who has experienced a cut in some way, you could currently be in a state of crisis. The stress you’re feeling is legitimate. It’s understandable that you would need an escape right now. But you’ll have to ask yourself if food is the best form of escape to reach for. How can you and your family experience escape that doesn’t make you feel bad? Find activities that are free: concerts, nature walks, DVDs from your local library.
A member wrote to us this week and said that she often chose the relief of food because it worked even if the positive effect was only for a few hours. However, she finally realized that feeling better by eating didn’t affect the problem at hand in a direct way. In fact, it just postponed getting on with the business of improving her circumstances. If the stress of these financial times is sending you in search of food, stop and think things through. How is eating ultimately going to help with what you’re handling? Remember that overeating is often a sign of powerlessness and defeat. When you think there’s no way that you can positively change your circumstances you might conclude, Why not at least give myself a few moments of pleasure by eating this treat? However, eating reinforces your belief that you’re powerless. It leaves you defenseless in these times when you need to be cultivating your sharpest mind, your most effective self, and your most creative thinking. Put the food down and play a game. Put the food down and think of a new way to generate income. Put the food down and plan ahead. We are all faced with more challenges than ever these days. But that also means we have the opportunity to rise to the challenges that face us.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 4:06:08 PM | 4 COMMENTS
TUESDAY, MARCH 31, 2009
To Lose Weight You Need a Team: Who's on Yours?
They say that cigarettes are a harder habit to kick than heroin or cocaine. Someone was quick to tell me that the only thing harder than any of those to quit is food. First of all quitting food entirely would result in sudden death (okay, not so sudden, but inevitable death). Besides that, food is everywhere. For many of us it’s our first addiction. From that first sip of sweet milk (or formula in my case) we get hooked. You can’t escape food and overindulging is so commonly accepted. An alcoholic can avoid bars and choose to have a dry household. A gambler can avoid Vegas. But everyone needs to eat at some point. If you are going to quit any substance, but especially food, there are a few things you need but one that is essential? Read more to find out what that critical component is.
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Last week my friend Pat began to quit smoking. He did it cold turkey. No patch. No gum. No nicotine sucking candies. I can attest to the fact that it was not easy for him. He is humble enough to say that two weeks without a cigarette is not enough to be able to say he has quit. "I'm not out of the water yet." He said. But there were some things I observed that helped him get through the hard parts (and there have been many) and these same things can help you through your worst cravings for food.
1. READINESS – Pat thought carefully about when he should quit. He wasn’t going to do it right before the fantasy baseball draft, or when he had to watch a neighbor’s kid, or when he had any other potentially stressful occasion. He picked a time when he knew he would be ready. Readiness is often the biggest part of committing to stopping a behavior we don’t want to continue. One of the reasons that so many of us fail at anything from stopping an emotional eating pattern, to smoking, to leaving an unsatisfying relationship is because we’re not actually ready. If we’re not ready, it might be better to admit that to ourselves (and maybe even to others, too) and just wait.
2. EXERCISE - Pat quit smoking but started exercising. Don’t underestimate the benefit of getting a little extra oxygen in your body. It clears your mind. It helps you sleep better. And it lowers your stress level. This doesn’t have to be anything major—a simple walk after dinner or on your lunch hour can make a huge difference.
3. SUPPORT – This is the last and most critical component of stopping an unwanted behavior. Ask yourself who is on your team. Is there anyone in your life with whom you can honestly share your struggles with food? Not just the fact that you want to lose some weight and that it’s hard, but rather that you depend on food for comfort. When Pat had a craving, he paced, he groaned, and he wrung his hands. I stayed with him. It didn’t require any magic words but he said just having someone around reminding him how far he had already come, was so helpful. This made me think of times when I have worked as a doula (a labor coach for pregnant women). It wasn’t too different from being with Pat or any of the people that I have helped with emotional eating. Just staying with a woman through a contraction is enough to get her through. Who reminds you of how far you’ve come? Who is on your team?
Someone might quit something cold turkey. But no one who changes an addictive or compulsive behavior does it alone. Whether you choose to do it with a therapist, a program, a counselor, a friend or a higher power, you need help. We all do. I know that some of the people who succeed the most at our program use our message boards and forums where they can find like-minded people who will understand their struggles and readily offer support. I’ve been so inspired by the ways in which I have seen people support one another there. Who can you depend on? Who can you be honest with? Vulnerable with? And open with in the midst of your worst cravings? Asking for help can be humbling, but it is certainly a sign of strength.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 10:01:42 PM | 14 COMMENTS
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 25, 2009
Become the Master of Your Emotions in Three Easy Steps
One of the reasons that feelings can be so uncomfortable is because you don’t know how long they’re going to last for. This element of the unknown can make them unbearable. But there are ways to become the master of your feelings rather than your feelings’ slave:
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Feelings are temporary. Someone told me today that feelings have a very short shelf life. Yet we react to them as though the feeling is sticking around for good. We overeat or binge because we can’t possibly imagine that the discomfort that we’re feeling (whether it’s loneliness, anxiety, depression, or boredom) will go away any time soon. And eating is just one of the ways that we do this. We yell and rage as soon as we get angry. We buy something as soon as we see it in a store window. We cut off a friend or loved one because we don’t like something minor that they’ve done and can’t possibly imagine that the feeling will ever go away.
What would happen if we sat with feelings before reacting to them? How long do you think they would last? Do you really believe that they would last forever?
One goal in life (particularly in adulthood) is to master our emotions. Emotions are no different than weather. They storm through us, they warm us, and they shake the earth beneath us. In order to weather the storm of these emotions we need to get through them without acting rashly upon them. When you are faced with intense emotions what can you possibly do? Well, there are three choices:
1. WAIT
Sometimes it’s best to take some time without doing anything. This doesn’t mean you should stuff an emotion. It just means taking a little bit of time to fully understand what you’re feeling and why and what you might want to do with that feeling. You might discover that the intense emotion you are feeling actually has a short shelf life and when left alone it simply disappears.
2. OBSERVE
Of course, we can observe our own feelings. Watch them like clouds passing over the sky. But this tool can be very helpful in the face of other people’s feelings. The only thing as hard as weathering our own intense emotions is witnessing other people weathering theirs. The reality is that other people’s displays of feelings can be very frightening to us. It can conjure up the impotent feeling from childhood when perhaps our parents were full of rage or were stuck in a frozen depression. For many of us, our tendency is to defend ourselves, retreat, or try to fix it. What if we didn’t do any of that? What if we simply stayed present and observed what the other person was experiencing? What if we didn’t take it personally? Then, perhaps, we could see through the way someone is saying something and potentially really hear what they are actually saying.
3. COMMUNICATE
If you’ve waited to see what happens to your emotion and the particular feeling you’re having has a longer shelf life than a can of spam, then perhaps it’s time to communicate your feelings to another person; a friend that will hear you out, the person that is affecting you, or a therapist that will guide you toward determining what actions to take.
Many feelings have to be fed to perpetuate themselves. Feelings like resentment, jealousy, and self-pity. Ironically, it’s these feelings that we end up feeding with food. By using this three-step process of wait, observe, and communicate we can use our feelings to help us navigate through life and life’s decisions. If we mute their intensity by eating we miss out on important messages that can positively alter our future in so many ways.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 5:46:26 PM | 25 COMMENTS
TUESDAY, MARCH 17, 2009
Never Diet Again
What would life look like if you never dieted again? Again and again it seems that all signs point to the fact that diets do more harm than good. If you’ve been on countless diets in the past, don’t fret over lost time, just consider a new way for tomorrow. Susie Orbach, writer and psychotherapist on women's psychology from England, talks a lot about the futility of dieting. Orbach’s books include Fat is a Feminist Issue, On Eating and most recently Bodies. Bodies discusses the fact that we tend to link so much of our happiness on the state of physical forms. As if a change in our corporeal state, whether through weight loss or plastic surgery, would alter our outlook and ultimate happiness. Sure, who doesn’t like to look good? But what happens when looking good consumes all of your thinking? How is there time for anything else?
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I never thought about my weight or body much until I was nine and attempted to fulfill my childhood dream of acting. An agent wanted to sign me and he mentioned that I would have to lose ten pounds. I wasn’t that skinny square-hipped kind of little girl but I wasn't fat either. I was more akin to the awkward barrel-bodied Abigail Breslin in Little Miss Sunshine. The next day I starved myself, refusing all food until four o’clock when I couldn’t resist two Oreos. I can remember all of the details vividly even though that day was almost thirty years ago. The look on the agent’s face, the fluorescent lighting in the room and sitting in the afternoon sun the next day with my cookies. Before that day, I had never thought too much about my body. Most of my time and thoughts went to reading and thinking and dreaming and school. If we weren’t so worried about our weight and what we’re going to eat, what might we have time for? I might have practiced monologues and developed my acting more. How about you? Would you have time to paint? To read? To laugh with your kids or spouse? To write? To dance? To garden? To play sports?
In the New York Times Magazine printed on March 8, 2009 Deborah Solomon interviewed Ms. Orbach who said, “Fat Is a Feminist Issue (her first book), was in part a plea to give up dieting and learn to recognize hunger and appetite and respond to them. Dieting, I argued, caused compulsive eating and destabilizes our relationship to food.
If you continually diet, you are putting your body in a quasi-famine situation. It slows your metabolism down and breaks the thermostat. Diets don’t work. They don’t help you understand why you’re eating more than your body wanted in the first place.”
This last part is the part that is the most interesting to emotional eaters and is at the core of Dr. Gould’s teachings which is that the focus must always be, not on what you eat, but rather on why you’re eating more than your body needs. The answer to this question isn’t always easy to figure out. Why do we eat more than we need? Well, we eat more than we need because we’re lonely. Tired. Angry. Upset. Frustrated. Overwhelmed. Annoyed. Need an escape. Want to numb out. Don’t want to be told what to do. The reasons are as varied and unique as all of us are. If not dieting, then what? There is an answer. It’s to boldly ask yourself how do I want to spend my time? How do I stop channeling my energy into obsessive thoughts about food and think about something else? Why do I eat more than what I need and how can I love myself enough to stop?
These are not easy questions to ask. But with help and support you can answer these questions. Another interesting fact about Susie Orbach is that she was the co-originator of the Dove Real Beauty campaign. I was so excited the first time I saw those ads. Beautiful women with real bodies on the glossy pages of a magazine. You see, you are already beautiful no matter what your body looks like. When you bring the focus back to your passions, your dreams, your goals, your interests and your talents you have so much less time to think about food. Your life gets richer and more satisfying and weight loss (without dieting) is just an added bonus because you're no longer eating more than you need.
Use the comments below to share what your life would be like if you never dieted again? If you didn't spend so much time thinking about food, what might you think about?
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 10:51:13 PM | 18 COMMENTS
TUESDAY, MARCH 10, 2009
The Pause Before the Purchase
In a recent interview that Dr. Gould had with a British magazine reporter she had an “a-ha-moment.” She realized a fundamental difference between the ways in which people have always tried to lose weight and The Shrink Yourself Method. She said, “We have been taught to divert our attention when we are hungry as the way to control through will power but you are saying instead to divert for a little while in order to create a pause, an interruption, time to think about why I am hungry. That is a big difference.” This Powerful Pause is your essential tool to avoid mindless eating and be the one in charge of the food choices you make. But there is a place where you need this pause even more than when you’re about to put the wrong foods in your mouth. You need this pause at the grocery store or any place you buy your food. If you’re the type of person who buys tempting foods hoping you’ll have the willpower to avoid eating them keep reading.
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Another aspect of The Powerful Pause is THE PAUSE BEFORE THE PURCHASE. Many of us make excuses for why we buy unhealthy things. Excuses like:
• I need to have sweets in the house for the children or grandchildren.
• My husband wants those foods around.
• I’ll eat them in moderation.
• I need them for guests.
• It was on sale.
Sometimes, the best solution to avoiding binges and overeating is to simply avoid keeping certain foods in the house. It’s just too tempting. When you’re in the store, pause and have a conversation with yourself. If you know it’s going to be too hard to avoid the temptation don’t buy it. It just sets you up for stress and failure. All of the excuses given above aren’t worth it. Children and grandchildren are probably better off without the treats too (not to mention husbands). You can ask guests to bring dessert or make something low calorie and healthy (like baked apples with low-fat frozen yogurt). There are always creative solutions. If your success is your priority then pause before you make a purchase and set yourself up to win.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 6:51:41 PM | 15 COMMENTS
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 04, 2009
New Study Says "Weight Loss Boils Down to Calories" (Don't Be So Sure That's All You Need)
Are you puzzled by all the diet options that are out there? Is there any right one? Any magic answer? Is low-carb or high-protein or low-fat the way to go? A New England Journal of Medicine study finally answers these questions.
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In The Los Angeles Times (February 26, 2009) there was an article reporting on the results of a New England Journal of Medicine study. It revealed that two decades after the debate began about which diet is most effective, the only thing that really matters is the amount of calories you eat. “and the winner is…not low-carb, not, low-fat, not high protein but…any diet. That is, any diet that is low in calories and saturated fats and high in whole grains, fruits and vegetables—and that an individual can stick with for a lifetime—is a reasonable choice for people who need to lose weight.”
In essence the character who runs a weight-loss class on Little Britain, the acclaimed BBC Comedy Show, had it right when she suggests that you should just eat all the same foods you eat now but just cut them in half which would ostensibly reduce your current caloric intake by fifty-percent.
From this study there are a few important things to note:
1. EAT A DIET LOW IN CALORIES & SATURATED FAT
Most people know this. The best diet to eat is one that’s low in calories and saturated fat (cheese, meat, processed and fast food) and high in whole grains (brown rice, quinoa, buckwheat, amaranth), fruits and vegetables. This isn’t new information.
2. [A Diet] AN INDIVIDUAL CAN STICK WITH FOR A LIFETIME
Less people know this information. Unfortunately, many of us have the incorrect (but very common) mind set that we can stick to a sensible eating plan until we lose the weight and then we can go right back to eating whatever we want. It doesn’t work this way. I can’t tell you how many people (including myself) reward weight loss with food. I hear things like this all the time. “I just weighed in today and lost two pounds so I’m going out for a sundae.” If you work hard and lose weight you deserve a reward, just don’t let it be food. Whatever low-calorie eating plan you choose must be one you are willing to stick to for life. A diet may take weight off but a change in lifestyle can keep it off for good.
3. MANAGE YOUR EMOTIONS
On the second page of the article was the part that I found the most interesting. In a two-line paragraph was the following information: “There may be a strong behavioral effect is the success of a diet, however. The people who attended two-thirds or more of the counseling sessions over the two years (of the study) lost an average of 22 pounds compared with the average loss of 9 pounds.” That means that the people that were dealing with their emotions lost two and a half times more weight than those that were simply following a diet. This information was minimized and made simple to overlook in the article but is really the most important part. When you face your feelings and develop awareness you can lose more weight and keep it off longer. This is why the Shrink Yourself program is the missing component to any diet you’re trying. It gives you the benefits of counseling for a fraction of the cost.
Don’t worry so much about finding the perfect foods to eat (or course, certain foods are better for your health than others) but rather cut down the quantity of the foods you already love. More importantly, however, keep asking questions. Keep facing yourself. And keep cultivating an awareness that you are more powerful than your cravings. That you can effect positive change in your weight and your life. And that do have other options besides eating.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 4:13:41 PM | 16 COMMENTS
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2009
Come Clean From Sugar Addiction
Last year I mentioned a study that said sugar was more addictive than cocaine to rats. Judging from humans, we’re not too different. I would bet there are plenty more of us that are addicted to sugar than to cocaine. If sugar is the thing that calls to you in the night, disrupts your good intentions and makes you feel powerless keep reading.
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Many of you have been writing in that sugar is the hardest thing you struggle with. I thought that warranted writing a blog about it. It’s no wonder that sugar is such a struggle because it is highly addictive. The more you eat, the more you want. And the fact is that we eat more of it than ever. It’s in everything (meat marinades, French Fries, crackers, bread, peanut butter). The average American eats 156 pounds of sugar a year. That’s almost half a pound a day. Measure out a half a pound of sugar and look at it. It’s a lot. And if you’re not cooking your food, you can never be sure how much sugar you’re really getting. The reason sugar is a habit so hard to kick is because there’s a physical and an emotional component.
The physical lure is that it gives you a sudden surge of energy. A jolt that your mind quickly associates with feeling good but your mind forgets that it also comes with a crash (not to mention added pounds and a whole host of other health problems). Your body can become like the plant in Little Shop of Horrors violently demanding that you feed it sugar the way Audrey 2 demanded blood.
The emotional lure is that sugar conjures up feelings of celebration, sweetness and reward. And depriving ourselves of it seems to make us feel like we’re being harshly deprived. A kind of deprivation that almost forces us to rebel and eat it anyway.
The powerful combination of physical and emotional enticement make sugar the hardest food to let go of. If you’ve ever been hooked on sugar I’m sure you’ll agree. However, when you give up sugar (after a couple of difficult weeks) you’ll find that the cravings go away. And this can be so liberating. I sometimes recommend that people give this a try. Giving up sugar gives you the opportunity to remove the physical addiction so you can just focus on the emotional one. I’m not suggesting that you never have sugar again. People should eat a piece of birthday cake but you’re bound to feel more in control if you’re the one who is choosing when and how much sweets to eat as opposed to being a slave to a body that’s addicted to sugar.
One thing to keep in mind is that you can’t just quit. Here are some things that I’ve found have made it easy in the past.
• Eat enough quality protein (fish, tofu, plain yogurt, lean meats)
• Incorporate a green powder into your diet (spirulina, pure synergy http://www.evolutionhealth.com/pure-synergy/puresynergy-ingredients.html or pro-greens)
• Eat good quality fats (olive oil, flax meal, cod liver oil, avocado, raw almonds)
• Satisfy the craving for sweet creatively (a cup of licorice tea or hot almond milk)
• Don’t use sugar substitutes (they keep you craving the flavor of sweetness)
• Savor natural sweetness (a roasted sweet potato, a perfectly ripe apple, a dried fig)
• Eat burdock (burdock naturally balances your glycemic levels)
• Eat quinoa once a day (it’s a gluten free high protein whole grain)
• Incorporate more non-food sweetness in your life (affection, play, laughter, charity)
I would never ask you to do anything that I wouldn’t do myself. So, to be in solidarity with all of you I’m going to give up sugar for the next forty days. One of our members says that when she looks at a dessert table these days she says to herself, “I am not a woman who eats brownies. I will not betray myself with this kind of food.” Come back here to talk about the panic that just the idea of giving up sugar can ignite (I’ve already started to think about any potential upcoming events where I’ll want to eat sugar) and how we feel along the way. If you choose to join in, don’t be a perfectionist about it. If you fall off the wagon, just come back here, write a comment and recommit. Once you go through a period like this it will be far easier to eat sweets once or twice a week in moderation. A different kind of sweetness awaits you. I can’t wait to hear what it is.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 9:11:31 PM | 61 COMMENTS
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 2009
Overcoming Emotional Eating: A Success Story
Overcoming emotional eating has a different looking success story than dieting. Sure, weight loss happens in both. But in dieting, weight loss is often the goal, the brass ring, the final destination. When you overcome emotional eating, a better life is the goal—a life where food is not an obsession, where you are the one in control, and where you know what your needs are and how to get them met. Weight loss is just a great side effect. To illustrate this point, I’d like to share a success story of one of our members.
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A member named Louise reported that she found herself eating uncontrollably almost every afternoon. This had been going on for four years. She just couldn’t stop. After inquiring into what might be going on for her she began to put the pieces together. Two years ago her husband died and he was sick for two years before that. The afternoon had been the time of day when he used to come home from work and they would share the details of their day during a walk. When he got sick, this walk stopped happening and the afternoon was now the time of day when Louise would leave the hospital to go home and take care of dinner for the children. What Louise realized is that she was eating to stave off her feelings of grief. She didn’t want to feel anything so she ate to fill the emptiness of losing her husband. Finally, she resolved to stop running away from the grief and to face it instead.
When the next afternoon arrived along with the usual cravings for food, she felt the sadness well up inside her. Instead of pushing it away, she said to herself in a loving voice, “Yes, honey. Of course, you’re sad.” As she gave herself permission to feel something interesting happened—the craving lessened. The next day she did the same thing. The third day she left the house in the afternoon for a walk and allowed herself to feel the sadness with each step she took. After a couple of weeks her afternoon binges had stopped and she was back to walking every day. She wasn’t elated, she was appropriately grieving but she wasn’t overeating on top of it all. You see, food never makes anything better. It just gives us guilt and extra weight on top of our existing problems. When we allow ourselves to believe that food is our only option, then each bite we take confirms our feelings of defeat and powerlessness. While each time we face a feeling we get stronger.
When you find yourself eating during stressful or painful times try one of the following options:
• Practice talking to yourself in a loving voice.
• Surrender to the feeling.
• Be proactive and take an action.
In the words of playwright August Wilson, “As my spirit got bigger, my demons got smaller.” Look for ways to improve your life, face your feelings and be kinder to yourself and weight loss will just be a side effect.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 11:13:13 AM | 15 COMMENTS
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 2009
Be the Master of Your Emotions & Eat Less
Beyond “stop crying” and “calm down” many of us don’t really get much direction in life for how to handle our emotions. It’s no wonder then that when storms of feelings that we don’t like or understand blow through our bodies, we get scared and want to escape (into food or something else). If we can barely deal with the simple primary color feelings like happy, sad and angry then how can we expect to cope with so many of these more nuanced and complex emotions? Feelings like rage or shame or resentment or jealousy or loneliness or abandonment can be terrifying.
Here are a few suggestions for becoming the master of your emotions:
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• THINK OF FEELINGS LIKE YOU THINK OF WEATHER
When I was a kid there was a book I loved called Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs. It was about a city where all of the food came from the sky. It didn’t rain, rain or snow, snow. It rained things like soup and snowed mashed potatoes. The residents of Chew And Swallow as the town was called didn’t necessarily like the weather but they learned to deal with it. And people that live with extreme weather conditions figure out the right things they need to wear to stay warm or cool. Same thing with feelings. What do you need when a storm of sadness is passing through? What do you need to really savor the warmth of a day of celebration? What do you need to stay grounded when the winds of confusion or frustration are blowing you off your center?
• HAVE A FEELINGS BOX
Keep a Ziploc bag or a pretty pouch for each of your troublesome feelings. What if you had a bag for ANXIETY. In the bag you could keep little pieces of paper with numbers of friends who make you feel better, poems that soothe you, pictures of places that evoke a memory of calm, suggestions of things to do. Whenever you felt anxious you might close your eyes and pull something from your bag and just do what it says. You could fill this bag with things that worked to comfort you in the past or things you’d like to try in the future.
• FEELINGS DO PASS
Again, like weather, feelings pass. If we can remember that then we don’t always need an escape because the escape will come with time. Then, the question becomes how can we get through the uncomfortable feeling? How can we survive, endure, learn something until it passes? Will prayer or meditation help? Will laughing with friends help? Will solitude help?
In some ways we are all machines, like computers or cars. When we understand what makes each of us tick AND malfunction then we have a better chance of our machine running efficiently. That doesn’t mean that we will never be blindsided by an unbearable disappointment or loss. It doesn’t mean we will always get it right. But when we understand our feelings and what we need to get through them, then we don’t have to fear them nearly as much. We can face them head on. We can use them to guide us to our next right step. And we can avoid food by being willing to feel life fully.
What do you need to face the feelings that scare you the most?
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 10:23:28 PM | 19 COMMENTS
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 04, 2009
Human Relationships Make Us Eat (But They Don't Have To)
This weekend is Valentine’s Day and for as much as all of us associate it with romance, it’s really a day about love, longing and human relationship. And for many of us emotional eaters, nothing makes us overeat or binge more than stress in our relationships. How can we handle the people in our lives in a more empowered way so that we turn to food a lot less?
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In a lecture with writer and Buddhist Lindsay Crouse, she asked the question, “What if everyone around you was enlightened and was there to teach you something?” Even if these lessons came with feelings of frustration, disappointment and resentment, there could still be something to be learned from almost anyone in our life. I tried to personally think about this question this past week. My son who takes two hours to do ten minutes of homework is teaching me to be more patient. My father who asked to come and stay with me from out of town for two weeks is teaching me to know my own limits and boundaries and have the courage to express them. A friend who has been generous with me is teaching me how to receive from others. What can you learn from the people around you? How can the lessons that they teach you every day make you stronger, or more compassionate, or more honest?
Similar to the ways that the people around us can hold the keys to our own growth and self-knowledge, our cravings for food each contain hidden secrets. We can actually come to view our cravings as red flags from our hearts and minds that clue us into the fact that there is something emotional going on for us; an unmet need, a wound, a place that longs to be seen or understood. When you simply feed the craving with food, you never wait long enough to hear the secret. What can you learn from your cravings? How can the lessons that they teach you make you stronger, more compassionate or more honest?
Holidays often lead to overeating and Valentine’s Day is no different. It’s a double whammy. A day of human relationships, longings and cravings of all kinds. If you asked someone what’s the first thing they think about when they think about February 14th, it might be cupid, or the color red, or chocolate, but I bet hands down for most people they’d picture a heart. A heart is the emblem of human emotion and Valentine’s Day brings up a whole range of feelings. Feelings like love, loneliness, longing, loss. For emotional eaters, these feeling get transformed into hunger and we find ourselves using food for comfort. If you are tempted to overeat or binge on Valentine’s day whether as an escape to get through the day or as a consolation prize for not having the love you want or even to celebrate the love you have then stop and ask yourself a couple of questions. What can I learn from my relationships and my cravings? How can the lessons that they teach me make me stronger, more compassionate or more honest?
Valentine’s Day is a day about love, not food, not sweets. Continuing with our theme this year of self-love as the cure for emotional eating, let it at least be in part, a day when you are kind to yourself, a day when you learn something about yourself that makes your life a little richer, a day when your real cravings get fulfilled instead of simply fed with a Whitman’s Sampler.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 11:55:42 AM | 16 COMMENTS
TUESDAY, JANUARY 27, 2009
Why Confusion Makes You Eat More Than Many Other Emotions
Most will agree that stress makes people eat. Or grief. Or celebration. Those emotions are easy to identify and associate with overeating. But what about when you've got a big tangled mess of emotions and you suddenly feel crazy and you don't know what you're feeling at all. The market crashed. Your spouse is giving you the cold shoulder. You got into a fight with a co-worker. Your kids are being sassy and unappreciative. The roof leaked rusty water all over your new white couch. The laundry isn't done. And you just want to escape. Gone are the days where you could scream, "Calgon, take me away." Gosh I'm dating myself but I'm sure some of you will remember the bubble bath commercial where the woman is overwhelmed and frustrated and screams that statement only to find herself in a soothing bubble bath. For most of us that kind of magical escape just doesn't happen so when we’re faced with emotions that we don't even understand ourselves, food can seem like and easy way out.
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While food will provide an escape, sitting with the knotted mess of feelings (while uncomfortable) can help you sort things through so you can really see what you're faced with. The market crashing can get thought through to a feeling, perhaps, I'm scared. Or I don't know what I'll do if I don't have enough money. That might be terrifying but it can also give you the chance to make a plan that creates a bit more safety. Your spouse giving you the cold shoulder might make you feel abandoned, lonely and sad. Think it through and you can say, I miss you or hold me or reassure me. When you think things through you might realize that you need some time off from your kids or help with the laundry. The key is that when there's a lot going on it can create so much buzzing in your body that anyone would want the relief of a food coma. That's why it's important to slow down and look, listen and feel.
When you're tempted to overeat because you're overwhelmed and confused here are some suggestions:
*Slow down
*Think things through
*Take each stressful situation and give it a feeling. Then, think of three things you could do to help this situation.
*Wait before acting
*Talk to a friend
*Write it out to get clarity
*Meditate or pray
There is always insight and possibility when you can understand what you're really feeling. Food gives you a momentary escape from the madness but cheats you out of a long-term solution.
If you're like me, you might not always know what you're feeling. The Shrink Yourself program helps you sort things through so you understand yourself and what you really need to feel better. There is so much more at stake than the number on the scale. Understanding how you seek relief from food will help you stop getting full and start getting fulfilled.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 10:42:27 PM | 11 COMMENTS
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 14, 2009
Caretaking and Overeating
One of the most common threads I see amongst overeaters, binge eaters and emotional eaters is that they often exhibit people-pleasing or co-dependent behavior. While there are many varied definitions for these two words the fact is that they are loaded with negative connotations. But the thing that is true about them is that they indicate a tendency to do for others at the cost of one’s self. If you’re a mother, you might be saying, wait isn’t that the definition of a mother, or even a spouse, an employee, a child of elderly or sick parents. Well, sometimes it is. I do things for my son when I would rather be reading a book or watching a movie. We all do. Love does involve sacrifice. However, there is fine line between being a giving person and being taken advantage of or quite simply giving too much.
How can you tell the difference and what does this have to do with overeating?
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Here are some questions to ask yourself.:
• Does your giving leave you feeling empty?
• Do you feel resentful?
• Do you wish that someone would do for you what you do for people?
• Do you feel unappreciated or sucked dry?
• Do you have little time for joy, play or laughter?
If you found yourself saying “yes” to many of those questions, you might not have the skills to take good care of yourself or to make yourself a priority. You might be surrounded by people that take too much. Or you might not know how to set boundaries. Look, as a single mother, I know this can be hard. I listen to hundreds of your stories everyday and I know that you are taking care of parents with dementia, you are doing your best to help children with disabilities and autism and Down’s syndrome, you have spouses that are depressed or selfish, you have children who are alcoholics or drug addicts, you are struggling financially, you are out of work, you are lonely, you are abused, your are in chronic physical pain, and the list goes on. There are so many things that have to get taken care of that it can feel overwhelming to even begin to understand what taking care of ourselves would look like. I will tell you a few ways that you can start to do this. But first I want you to understand how deeply linked caretaking is to overeating.
Here are a few critical things to consider:
• When your life is devoid of joy overeating can feel like the only reward you get for putting up with so much pain and disappointment.
• When you don’t get enough time to yourself, a late night binge can feel like a decadent time where you are only focused on pleasing yourself.
• When you give so much that it leaves you empty, food can feel like it fills you up.
• When your needs aren’t met, food can be one obvious need that you know how to give yourself.
• When you don’t know how to consistently make your health and well-being a priority, you might stick to a sensible eating plan or exercise regime for a little while but will abandon it when someone seems to need something or has a crisis.
I wouldn’t be surprised if you found yourself nodding to many of the things you’re reading. I sometimes get saddened by how much time has passed in my life, my relationships that have suffered and the ways in which I put my own health in jeopardy by “caring” for others. I try my best to forgive myself and accept that I did the best that I could with the information I had at the time. But now, I’m learning new skills. Just like all of you are. My New Year’s blog was about how self-love is the way to losing weight. Today someone sent me a quote from Jenny Craig. It said, “Self-love is the only weight loss aid that works in the long run.” Gosh, you mean she could’ve saved us tons of money on pre-packaged food by just telling us that up front. I say that with both sarcasm and love because it seems so obvious and yet it’s so hard. So, where do we begin?
Here are some small places to start:
• Find some small act that you can do everyday to take care of yourself (one woman told me that she was going to take three really deep breaths whenever she went to the toilet – Yes, it can be as small as that)
• Ask for what you need in a direct way.
• Practice saying “no.” (If this is too hard just practice saying something that buys you a little time to think about it for example, I need to check my calendar or I need to get back to you, etc.)
• Adopt a spiritual practice (meditation, yoga, journaling, gratitude or just being sure to look at the sunset or stars each night).
• Find real sources of love, reward, relaxation and peace that don’t have the added backlash that overeating does.
You are worth all of the care, time and attention that you give others. Overeating is not the way that you please yourself, eating well is the way that you love yourself and make your needs a priority.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 12:28:05 AM | 20 COMMENTS
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 07, 2009
3 Steps to Certain Weight Loss
Everyone knows that there are two essential ingredients that you need to lose weight.
Even kids know them. They are:
1. A Sensible Eating Plan and
2. A Regular Exercise Routine
Simple. Right? Wrong. If it were that simple everyone would be the weight that they want to be. If you haven’t succeeded at losing the weight you want yet, it’s not your fault. You haven’t had all the necessary information to succeed. There is a missing step that most people don’t know. The third step to certain weight loss is:
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3. UNDERSTAND EMOTIONAL EATING
As we struggle to overcome obesity, the nation is finally catching on to how important this third step is. Oprah is talking about stress and eating. Dr. Gould was asked to contribute to People magazine where their focus in this year’s Weight Loss Issue was the emotional and psychological hurdles people have had to overcome to finally lose the weight they wanted to lose. It’s time for us to come out of hiding and admit that this is hard to do. It’s time to support one another.
When you understand and can control emotional eating you can succeed at any eating plan and exercise regime you choose. You suddenly have the power to succeed. How do you know if this third step is the thing that has stopped your success? See if you ever hear any of the following statements in your head:
• No one is going to tell me what to eat.
• I deserve this piece of cake, candy, chocolate, whatever.
• I ate so well, I can afford to eat what I want now.
• Food will calm me down.
• I’m so bored that all I can think about is food.
• I want it and I don’t care if I shouldn’t have it.
• I’ve failed so many times, I just don’t believe I will ever lose the weight.
• I know what I should eat but I just can’t do it.
• I can’t stick to an exercise regime.
• I don’t follow through on things.
• I give to everyone, when will someone ever give to me.
• I’m messy or disorganized.
• I feel empty inside.
• I’m constantly filled with fear and worry.
• I’m frustrated.
• I’ll start tomorrow.
• I can’t stand the idea of failing one more time.
If any of these statements resonated with you, getting help with emotional eating will help you finally break the pattern. Don't blame yourself or shame yourself. It’s hard to overcome emotional and psychological hurdles to weight loss alone,especially when you didn't have all the information. So be sure to learn everything you need to know. You can join a support group, enlist the help of your loved ones, read the Shrink Yourself Book or join the Shrink Yourself program.
You deserve to have the success you’ve been craving. You just need to be sure that you have all the necessary ingredients to succeed. The good news is that the awareness that it takes to overcome emotional eating will positively affect your whole life. The added benefit will be weight loss.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 12:37:49 AM | 27 COMMENTS
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 31, 2008
How to Finally Lose Weight in the New Year
It seems the whole world is finally getting hip to the fact that the missing link to successful weight loss is psychological. It’s not about the right diet, pill, program or surgery. It’s not about willpower. It’s simply about understanding why you eat and what you’re really hungry for. The New Year’s issue of People magazine this year focuses on the emotional and psychological hurdles that people had to overcome to lose half their overall weight. In fact, as the foremost authority on Emotional Eating Dr. Gould contributed tips to this issue. And Oprah in the January issue of O magazine said, “What I’ve learned this year is that my weight issue isn’t about eating less or working out harder, or even about a malfunctioning thyroid. It’s about my life being out of balance, with too much work and not enough play, not enough time to calm down.”
Therefore if one of your New Year’s Resolutions is to have this be the year that you actually lose the weight you want, commit to understanding yourself better and being kinder to yourself. Losing weight starts with loving yourself. The following list doesn’t cost you anything and the benefits are priceless.
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• Start a meditation practice
• Speak kindly to yourself
• Watch less TV
• Make love more
• Play with your kids
• Let things go
• Stop complaining
• Start a gratitude practice (write down three things you’re grateful for each night)
• Take a walk with your family after dinner
• Forgive yourself when you fail
• Turn off your cell phone
• Look for opportunities to be of service to others
• Read a great book
• Take baths before bed
• Don’t gossip
Simple things like these make you the master of your own mind. They decrease anxiety by keeping you firmly planted in the present moment. From this place, it’s much easier to engage is self-loving acts like eating well and exercising. Marianne Williamson, author of Return to Love, advised Oprah, “Your overweight self doesn’t stand before you craving food. She’s craving love.” The article continued on to say, “ Falling off the wagon isn’t a weight issue; it’s a love issue.”
In the New Year, instead of setting a resolution to lose weight, why not resolve to explore ways to love yourself better?
Please use the comments below to share ways that you could be more loving to yourself.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 12:03:58 PM | 19 COMMENTS
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 24, 2008
Does TV Make You Overeat?
Researchers at the University of Maryland found the one activity unhappy people do more than happy people is watch TV. And if you’re unhappy, not only are you watching more TV, but you might also be emotionally eating to deal with your unhappiness. It’s no wonder that so many people report that overeating and TV watching go hand-in-hand.
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"We looked at 8 to 10 activities that happy people engage in, and for each one, the people who did the activities more — visiting others, going to church, all those things — were more happy,” Dr. [John] Robinson said. “TV was the one activity that showed a negative relationship. Unhappy people did it more, and happy people did it less.”
New York Times
Even thought the results of this study were taken over a 30-year period there is a bit of a chicken or an egg with this study. Does watching TV make you more unhappy? Or do you watch more TV when you’re unhappy. Either one or both might be true. There is no way to know for sure. But now that the holiday specials are over, just as an experiment, I’d like to challenge you to turn off your TV for a week and try a few other things instead. You see, TV passes the time but it often doesn’t enrich you in any lasting way. And usually you’ve put off something by watching TV. Same thing with emotional eating. The things that I’d like you to try might just affect your happiness and lead you to turn to food a lot less.
The things that the study said that happy people do more of are:
Visiting Others, in other words, SOCIAL CONTACT – Television can never make up for the enjoyment of connecting and communicating with another person. If the set is off you might find yourself making more plans and having more conversations.
Going to Church, in other words, A SPIRITUAL PRACTICE – If the boob tube is off, you might have time to do something that nurtures your soul. This could be anything from praying and meditating to taking a walk in nature or seeing an art exhibit.
Having Sex, in other words, AFFECTION and INTIMACY – If you have a partner, you might find that without television there is more time for touch. If you don’t have a partner, you might find ways to indulge yourself. There might be time for baths, crafts and intimate experiences with friends and family.
More importantly when the TV is off there is more time to get things accomplished and when you don’t put off things, you feel more competent and confident. Getting overwhelmed is one of the main things that make people overeat and binge.
Most of you know that I don’t have a TV and haven’t had one for years. So, for me, the idea of a week without watching is not too difficult. But I’d like to encourage you to give it a try. Turn off the television and see what happens to your happiness. Don’t forget, you can’t just turn it off, you have to replace the time you normally spend watching with meaningful experiences. A more fulfilled life decreases your need to fill up on food. Give it a shot and let us know what you experienced in the comments section below. And if you’re looking for things to do, click here to try a free session.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 7:39:12 AM | 8 COMMENTS
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 17, 2008
Don't Fall Into Old Familiar Patterns During the Holiday Season
The Holidays are a time of ritual and tradition. We sing the same songs. Put out the same menorah or hang the same ornaments on the tree. And eat the same foods. So much of the beauty is the familiarity and the routine. However, some of these cyclical things that happen every year might not be things you look forward to. You could experience the same binges, the same overeating, the same fights, the same struggles in your family dynamic and the same expectation and disappointment.
How can you start to change the negative patterns while holding on to the rituals that you love so much?
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1. Carve a New Pathway
If you are new to learning how to deal with ending a pattern of emotional eating, the holidays can be a challenge. The combination of heightened stress and access to infinite amounts of decadent food is not a great combination. I heard a lecture the other day about the human brain. There are neural pathways in the mind and we have to keep them open or they stop working. Sometimes we have to create new ones where there aren’t any. For example, there is a pathway created when you memorize a phone number and the more things you commit to memory the more your memory works. Almost like driving after a snowstorm. The first car might have a hard time carving out a path to drive on. But the next car has an easier time because there are now indentations in the snow. And the next one an even easier time. How does this tie into emotional eating? Well, I’ll tell you. This year it might take a lot of awareness and work to resist turning to food in the same ‘ole ways you usually do at festivities. Your mind (and belly) are expecting the same eating patterns that you’ve always had during the holiday season. But perhaps you can view it like the car in the snow. This year, you could carve a new path and even though it might be hard, next year will be easier. And after a few years, the holidays will no longer be directly linked with a time of year when you struggle with food. How can you let this year carve a new pathway for future years to come? Can you plan what you’re going to eat? Can you say “no” to sweets? Can you stop using food to fill up the emptiness when you’re unfulfilled or disappointed?
2. Don’t Do the Same Thing Expecting a Different Result
Einstein said, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.” We all do this during the holiday season. We have expectations that this year will be different. But we do things the same and sadly, experience the same disappointments. What can you do differently this year? Not just with your eating habits, but with your family and friends, too. Can you avoid a conflict? Can you ask for help? Can you be more unconditionally loving? Can you plan ahead? Can you ask for what you want instead of hoping you get it? Just because things have always gone a certain way, doesn’t mean they have to keep going in the same direction.
3. Know Your Patterns So You Can Win
With both food and family, if you know your patterns you can do things differently. What are your weak spots? Is it cheese and crackers? Is it Christmas Cookies? Is it latkes? Do you tend to eat when you first arrive to ease into a social situation? Do you keep eating at the end because you want to leave but feel obligated to stay? With family, are you the peacekeeper, the responsible one, the troublemaker? Knowing these common patterns give you a chance to see things clearly and do things in a new way.
5. Expect an Imperfect Holiday
The holiday can be great but there’s a good chance it won’t be perfect. If you accept that in advance, you might find yourself having more fun than usual. You might not make the perfect food choices, but you can still make better choices than you made last year. You might not have enough money to buy all the perfect gifts, but maybe that encourage you to make a homemade gift that will be far more meaningful. You might not have a perfect loving season with your spouse but if you can remember to stop amidst the chaos and have a few long hugs that might be a great way to stay connected.
These things can help you make small changes that might make a very big difference.
Since this is the holidays and everyone loves a story. I thought I’d include this poem. It's one of my favorites and perfect for the metaphor of carving new paths this holiday season.
THERE'S A HOLE IN MY SIDEWALK
Autobiography in Five Short Chapters
By Portia Nelson
Chapter One
I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I fall in.
I am lost .... I am helpless.
It isn't my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.
Chapter Two
I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend that I don't see it.
I fall in again.
I can't believe I am in this same place.
But, it isn't my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.
Chapter Three
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there.
I still fall in ... it's a habit ... but, my eyes are open.
I know where I am.
It is my fault.
I get out immediately.
Chapter Four
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.
Chapter Five
I walk down another street
I wish you the happiest imperfect holiday season that you’ve ever had.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 2:31:39 PM | 6 COMMENTS
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 10, 2008
Oprah's Struggle with Overeating: What Does that Mean for You?
In yesterday's online version of People magazine it announced the theme of Oprah's January issue of O: Oprah has "fallen off the wagon." Oprah has gained forty pounds hitting the 200-pound mark. I'm writing about this for a number of reasons none of which are to celebrate Oprah's struggle but rather help you find compassion for her and for yourselves. Like so many of us Americans, her height and weight now make her officially obese. Let's look at the things that she said in the article and what they mean for you:
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1. Yo-Yo Dieting Feels Bad
Oprah was quoted saying things like, "I'm mad at myself," and "I felt like a fat cow." Be sure to pay attention to your self-talk. Shaming or blaming yourself never helps to lose weight. We make good choices about food and exercise only from a place of self-love and self-acceptance. It's important to learn how to bounce back so that you can forgive yourself when you falter and get back in the saddle.
2. Knowledge is Not Always Power
"I'm embarrassed... I can't believe that after all these years, all the things I know how to do, I'm still talking about my weight. I look at my thinner self and think, 'How did I let this happen again?" Oprah has access to all the information in the world, she can afford private trainers, lap band, liposuction and private chefs and that's still not enough to lose and keep the weight off. For the most part we all know that the magic recipe to lose weight is eat less/exercise more. Knowledge is not the answer. The missing link is being able to understand that food has a hold over you because you've installed it as a coping mechanism for anxiety, depression, boredom, loneliness and just about anything else. If you struggle with your weight it doesn't mean you're lazy or stupid (obviously not the case with Oprah). Intelligence is not enough to keep weight off. You need to heal your wounded places, find your unmet needs and offer yourself other, dare I say better, forms of comfort.
3. Food Can't Be Your Reward for Losing Weight
She mentioned that in 2005 she came out on her show wearing size 10 jeans after being on a four-month liquid diet. She said, "Two hours after that show, I started eating to celebrate—of course, within two days those jeans no longer fit!" So many of us do this. We get a taste of success. Our pants stop pinching us when we're sitting down or we don't feel the fat on our muffin tops vibrating when we drive our cars and suddenly we think that means we can treat ourselves with a little of this or that. To keep weight off for life, food has to stop being your reward. It can be a reward sometimes but it can't be your only reward.
4. Weight Issues are About the Management of Emotions, Not What You Eat
"My greatest failure was in believing that the weight issue was just about the weight," Winfrey told People Magazine in 1991. "It's about not handling stress properly." This is the information that Shrink Yourself has been teaching people for years. Overcoming weight issues has nothing to do with finding the right diet pill, plan or program. Overcoming weight issues has everything to do with how you handle stress. Despite all the glamour that people envy one could easily understand
that Oprah’s life must be stressful. She has a whole lot of responsibility to her followers and with that comes a lot of pressure and strain. It's no wonder that she would often return to her old source of comfort: food.
I've heard it said that human beings learn in spirals. We return to the same issues again and again, hopefully with new information, new skills and new insights. Your fluctuations in weight can be opportunities to learn more and more about who you are and what you need to manage the stress in your life. Overcoming emotional eating isn't easy. But we see people doing it here every day, with the support of an understanding community, and by finding the skills needed to stop using food as a friend, lover or form of medication and as Dr. Roger Gould says, to finally let food be just food. Our compassion is with Oprah and all of us who struggle to let food be just food. In the words of High School Musical (sorry I can't resist, I have an eight-year old) we're all in this together.
If stress is the thing that keeps you yo-yoing take a free session and see how we can start helping you today.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 10:32:51 AM | 34 COMMENTS
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 03, 2008
Overspending & Overeating: What's the Connection?
Did you ever notice that the holidays are often a time when your
body gets heavier and your burden of debt gets heavier, too? There
is a direct correlation between overeating and overspending and no
time like the holiday season for this to flare up. Americans (and
many other Western Cultures) are consumers; we're consumers of food
making us the heaviest people in the world and we're consumers of
goods making us the most in debt in the world. You don't become obese
over night and you don't get in debt over night either. These two
things take time and a recurrence of practicing the same habits over
and over again. Both of these issues are ignited by choosing
immediate gratification over long-term peace and happiness. What it
will take to lose weight is not that different from what it will take
to get out of debt. Here's how you do it:
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1. Know Where Your Calories (or Money) Go
Try keeping a log for one month of your expenditures and your calorie
consumption. When you know where you're spending, you get to be the
one who chooses. For instance, writing down where you spend your
money could enlighten you. You might think that you could never
afford a massage once a month but when you look at your receipts, you
notice that going to Starbucks every day is costing you $120/month.
What if you went every other day? With that information, you have a
choice. You can get a massage once a month for $60 and you'll be
consuming half the calories, too. Same thing with food. You might
deprive yourself of cake but when you look at your calorie
consumption you see that you're consuming 500 calories in sugar and
half & half in your coffee. Do you really want four cups of coffee or
would you rather have a piece of cake? When you know where the money
or calories are being spent, you can make more informed choices.
2. Think About the Future
In the immediate moment a tasty treat or a new purchase can seem like
the answer to every woe in the world. Be sure to stop and think
things through. No matter what you're feeling, will eating something
make you feel better in the end? Is that new shirt that costs $50
really worth it when it'll end up costing $150 by the time you pay
the finance charges on your credit card. Slowing things down and
thinking things through will limit the amount of impulsive,
unconscious decisions you make.
3. Be Selfish
When I say be selfish I don't meant what you think. I'm suggesting
that you stop keeping foods in the house because you think that
others will be disappointed if they're not there. For example, I have
to have sweets for the kids. Or feeling like you have to eat with
your husband even though you had dinner with the children two hours
before. When it comes to spending (particularly at the holidays) you
don't have to please people with purchases you can't afford
(especially in today's economy). Do what's right for you and don't
feel badly about it. Find other ways to make the holidays special
that don't include food or presents. Your children might remember a
night of caroling with a thermos of mulled cider for a lifetime while
they might never again remember a toy that will get discarded two
months from now.
Learning to regulate what you eat and where you spend your money are
two important aspects of being an adult. When you binge of food or
binge on buying, it often causes more anxiety than it quells. Keep
yourself calm by thinking things through and choosing where and how
you're going to reward yourself. When you know where your money (and
calories) go, you have more choices; and with more choices comes
more freedom, and with more freedom; greater peace of mind.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 6:19:40 AM | 12 COMMENTS
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 2008
Gratitude
I read a quote that said, “If I could only have one prayer it would be thank-you.” The importance of gratitude shouldn’t be underestimated. Many people adopt a gratitude practice. And what better time of year than Thanksgiving to do so.
For Emotional Eaters, Thanksgiving kicks off the holiday season and can create a lot of anxiety. How will you face the holidays without overeating? How will you be strong in the face of all the food that surrounds you? How will you face the stress of family gatherings without the comfort of food? How will you face the pressure of the holidays in a failing economy without rewarding the people you love with pies and cookies since you might not be able to give them as many gifts? So many questions. So many concerns. But you can counterbalance the strain by shifting your focus.
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People have told me that they came to view their pattern of overeating as a blessing instead of a curse. They actually said thank-you for their feelings of powerlessness over food. Why? Because the discomfort of overeating (the added weight, the guilt and frustration) led them on a path to Shrink Yourself, a path where they had to face themselves, their feelings and their real needs. On this journey they found it wasn’t just their weight that was suffering, it was their lives, their fulfillment and their relationships. As they improved these parts of their lives, they needed food less and less. But if it weren’t for food, they would never have gotten uncomfortable enough to go looking for a better way. Can you find some reason to say thank-you for the struggles you’ve had with food?
Challenge yourself this holiday season to cultivate a gratitude practice. It can be simple. You can just say three things each night that you’re grateful for. You can say it to yourself. Your spouse. Or you can write it in a journal. Kids love to participate in this. You can do it at the dinner table or before bedtime. In a time when it’s easy to see what we don’t have, it’s great to remember the things that we do. What can you be thankful for? Love? A home? Healthy children? Enough food? Friends? Laughter? Saying thank-you for both the struggles and the successes can give us hope.
I am grateful for all of you and for the hope you give me everyday with your courage, your tenacity and your compassion for one another. I wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 7:39:02 AM | 7 COMMENTS
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2008
Men are Emotional Eaters Too
The majority of people that come to our site are women. This isn’t because emotional eating doesn’t affect men. It’s because it’s acceptable for men to overeat because they’re hungry, because they like food or even because they’re gluttons but it’s not acceptable for them to eat out of comfort. This can make it really hard for men to get the help they need even though they struggle with so many common emotional eating issues like binging, compulsive overeating and stress eating.
Last night I was at a friend’s watching reruns of The King of Queens (you all know I don’t have a television). The episode that was on was called Furious Gorge. Doug’s wife Carrie sends him to an overeating support group and instead he randomly happens into a support group for men whose wives are abusive. In the meeting he discovers that it’s his wife’s rage that sends him into the “loving arms of food.”
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For Emotional Eater’s Who are Men
This site is for you, too. The men who have used our program have reaped equal benefits as the women but sadly most men don't come looking for help. You deserve to understand what’s behind your overeating. What needs aren’t getting met? Are you stressed by your boss, your relationship or the economy? Eating doesn’t solve the problem but you might not know how to solve it and so food can feel like a quick fix. It can be more difficult for you to express yourself. I’m not about to attempt to claim that I understand the male experience or mind. In fact, God knows I don’t. But I’ve heard it said that women have a 64 pack of Crayola Crayons to paint their feelings to the world and men get a measly three pack of primary colors that they give you at Applebee’s free with your menu. Expressing your feelings can be difficult but there’s so much more at stake than your heart, your cholesterol and your blood pressure. When you begin to understand why you eat you can begin to make different choices not just about food, but about work, relationships and fun.
For the People Who Love Men Who are Emotional Eaters
You don’t have to fix the male emotional eater in your life. You don’t have to leave the Shrink Yourself book out where they might see it or bookmark the homepage hoping they’ll get the hint. What you can do is be empathic. If you see they’re eating a lot maybe you can do something to ease their stress. Affection can make a big difference. Acknowledge the things they’re doing. And ease off on some of the nagging, for instance let them get away with forgetting to take the trash out for once. Above all, the best way you can help is leading by example. If they see you choosing other ways to deal with stress besides eating they might get inspired.
I am the mother of a boy. I can see that he has a tendency to choose food (particularly sweets) when he’s frustrated, bored or lonely. I’m trying to help him find other ways to deal with his emotions. But some boys that grew into men didn’t get a chance to find a new or different way to deal with stress. It's never too late. The first step is acknowledging that men are affected by emotional eating, too. Please allow me to welcome the men out there in the hopes that you too can get the help you need to recover your power over food which means becoming more empowered in your whole life.
Please use the comments below to share experiences about men and overeating.
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 11:35:31 PM | 3 COMMENTS
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 2008
3 Ways to Enjoy the Time Until You Lose the Weight
Steve Tyler says, “Life is a journey, not a destination.” The problem with weight loss (and so many other things) is that we’re so goal-oriented. Even practices like meditation and yoga that are meant to bring you into the present are about getting to the end so you can say you completed it and feel like you did your part in staying healthy. People go to school, not to learn, but to earn a degree. People make love, not to experience connection and sensuality, but to climax. People eat well and exercise, not to nourish and care for themselves, but to lose weight.
When you have a lot of weight to lose reaching that goal can be a long way off. So, what do you do to make your journey worthwhile until you arrive at your destination.
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1. REMEMBER MORE IS AT STAKE THAN JUST YOUR WEIGHT - For emotional eaters it’s not just our weight that suffers, it’s our quality of life. If we are turning to food to comfort it means that we’re not expressing ourselves honestly, that we haven’t found an outlet for our passion and dreams or that we’re staving off our dissatisfaction. Therefore, the more we admit our real needs and attend to them, the better our lives are and the less we need food as a crutch. On our way to our goal weight are many moments when we have the opportunity to be true to ourselves instead of eating.
2. EXERCISE & EATING WELL IS A WAY TO LOVE YOURSELF – It’s been said that you can’t love another person or be loved by another person until you know how to love yourself. But if you’re like me that whole thing sounds like an abstract concept, in other words a potential load of bull. What does loving yourself actually mean? Well, each time you make a choice to eat well, to avoid junk food, to go out for that walk, to go to the gym despite the cold weather, to plan and cook healthful meals, you are loving yourself. For some people, who never had loving, nurturing parents, this is actually a way to re-parent yourself. Each choice becomes an opportunity to love yourself instead of it being a moment where you feel resentful of being deprived.
3. YOUR BAGGAGE GOES WITH YOUR WEIGHT - For many people who have been delaying their growth and development by overeating, each pound lost represents a step towards a more evolved self. When you eat instead of coping, you disable your best thinking. Over time you lose confidence that you can, in fact, cope without the comfort of food. By facing your demons, the old ones and the everyday ones, you get stronger. August Wilson, the playwright, said, "As my spirit got bigger, my demons got smaller." Your baggage starts to fall away with each lost pound. Therefore, your journey can be walked with a lighter step, both literally and metaphorically.
So many people that write in to us share that when they stop eating for emotional reasons they gain control of their lives, confidence in who they are and greater peace of mind. Those things are so vital that those same people often tell us that the weight loss is just an added bonus. They no longer need to wait for their goal weight for their lives to begin, instead they have learned how to join their lives already in progress.
How can you enjoy the journey on your way towards your goal weight?
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 11:19:29 PM | 14 COMMENTS
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2008
Is Food Your Substitute for Love?
“Forget love, I’d rather fall in chocolate.” I saw that on a bumper sticker. Who wants to fall in love? Well, judging by the success of every online dating site despite the failing economy, I would say most people are looking for love or looking for ways to improve their relationship. Unfortunately, the sweetness of romance can be unkindly bitter and with that in mind, the sweetness of cakes and Halloween candy and ice cream can feel like a sure thing. It can seem like a rational conclusion to make…don’t fall in love…fall in chocolate…but there are probably some things that you might not have considered.
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If You’re in a Relationship
There are many ways we abandon and betray our partners in relationships. The most obvious way is cheating with another person. But there are much more subtle ways we abandon and betray our partners for instance focusing all our energy on the pets or children, being obsessed with work, not listening, being easily distracted, being constantly busy (cleaning, cooking, doing, planning) and one you might not expect is emotional eating. When food becomes our obsession it’s not that different from taking a lover. It’s just that the lover we’ve taken doesn’t have a heartbeat. We obsess about food the way someone might obsess about a mistress, we think about the private time we’ll get with a particular food the way one might when they’re having an affair, we focus on food and shut the other person out. With all those thoughts of food, how can we consider our partners? They say that adultery is just a symptom that something else is wrong in the relationship. You might have taken food as your lover after many years of being disappointed in your partnership. Perhaps you’ve given up trying to make it work and figure I won’t get the love, affection, communication or acknowledgment from my partner that I need so I might as well give myself the pleasure of eating what I want. Only problem, is when food fills your mind you’ve left the relationship. You intercept your best thinking by feeding yourself instead of feeding your love. When you give up food as your lover you can see one of a few things clearly. 1. Food may have been helping you tolerate being in a relationship that just doesn’t work anymore and perhaps it's time to do something about that. 2. If you feed your relationship as much as you’ve been feeding yourself the passion in your relationship might just reignite. 3. Food may have been the third wheel in your relationship.
If You’re Single
Many people that I talk to say that they eat out of loneliness. A lot of binging and overeating happens at night and on the weekend. When I inquire more deeply into why that might be it’s often because one associates the night or the weekend with special time that they’d like to be spending with a partner. It’s normal to be lonely when you wish you were with someone. Only problem with taking food as a substitute lover is that each time you overeat or binge you feel less attractive and less confident. This has something to do with weight but not everything. There are plenty of overweight people that have partners that are attracted to them. However, when you use food for emotional reasons, as you gain weight you lose your sense of self. And as you lose your sense of self you feel less and less confident. Each time you use food as your lover, you delay learning the skills you need to meet a suitable partner and you chip away at your self-confidence. The reality is that food never gives you the love that you’re looking for. It doesn’t talk to you, it doesn’t hold you, it doesn’t keep you warm at night. We can’t always meet someone exactly when we want to but how do we want to spend our time until a special person comes a long. Do we want to spend our time nursing ourselves with food or do we want to spend our time discovering who we are and what is unique about us? On lonely nights and weekends, rent movies that make you laugh, go to museums, meet up with friends, take walks to look at autumn leaves.
You all deserve love, whether you're in a relationship, or not, but instead of food being your substitute for love, eating well can be an every day way that you care for and love yourself.
Use the comments below to talk about the ways that you use food as a substitute for love and what areas of your life might be suffering as a result of your emotional eating.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 5:55:45 PM | 24 COMMENTS
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 23, 2008
3 Ways to Combat Perfectionism
Progress, not perfection. People that are on a journey to lose weight always resonate with that statement. But for most of us, before we hear or believe a statement like that, we’ve already spent a lot of years thinking we should be perfect or we could be perfect. Today, I heard someone say, “When I got hypothyroidism I had to accept that I was not going to be the perfect size two anymore so I might as well be as fat as I could get.” Many people figure why not be fat if they can’t be perfect forgetting that perfect doesn’t exist. And if we expect ourselves to be perfect in our quest to lose weight, we’re going to be gravely disappointed and therefore more inclined to get resigned and give up. The simple fact is we’re going to have days when we make good choices and days when we could have made better choices. Sometimes, varying between those two can happen in the course of a single meal. So, how do you stop trying to attain perfection? Here’s some things that have worked for me.
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1. THINK OF BILL GATES
I used to think that I wasn’t going to publish anything until it was perfect but Bill Gates helped me let go of my perfectionism. You see, Microsoft Word is one of the most flawed programs on the market. Bill Gates didn’t wait till he got it perfect. In fact, he released a new version this year and it is still imperfect. And we are still buying it, imperfections and all. If he had waited till he got it perfect, it wouldn’t be on sale yet today and he wouldn’t have billions of dollars to show for his imperfections. So, while you might not be able to lose weight perfectly just giving it a go can be worth the investment. It was for Bill and it can be for you, too.
2. BEING A PARENT
I have generally been good at the things that I try in life. I graduated with a 3.96 GPA (almost perfect), I can cook a meal for 12 gracefully, I can drive a manual car and a motorcycle but once I had a child I had to learn to cope with imperfection. If you don’t have a child, then think of any humbling thing you’ve tried. Being a perfect parent doesn’t exist. There are literally hundreds of opportunities a day to practice self-acceptance, creativity, patience, love, understanding, tolerance. There are hundreds of uncomfortable feelings too –anger, disappointment, joy, love, loneliness, exhaustion. The only thing I can do is show up and try my best. When I make a choice I don’t feel proud of, I forgive myself and learn from it for the next opportunity that will be winging its way at me within the next few seconds usually. It’s no different when ending a pattern of overeating or binging. You’re not going to get it perfect. You’re not going to eat only the prescribed amount of food. You’re not always going to leave the last bite on your plate or deny yourself of seconds. If you can accept that you’re less likely to do the common thing of giving up for the day once you’ve made one imperfect choice.
3. ACCEPTING MY BEST
I’m not going to have the perfect body, at least not in this lifetime. I have stretch marks from gaining eighty pounds in my pregnancy, I have less than perfect breasts from nursing for two years and truth be told I have cellulite on my posterior (I’m sure this blog will now help me attract heaps of male suitors – wink, wink). That being said, I have never been happier with my body. I’m not happy because my body is perfect. I’m happy because I do the best that I can to take care of it. I exercise five times a week even though I hate it. I eat well. I usually get enough rest. And I enjoy the foods I like in smaller quantities. I don’t feel deprived. I feel empowered by making the best choices I can. And when I don’t make good choices I forgive myself and try a little better the next time.
Lastly, did you know that most drum sounds on music that you hear today is made by a drum machine. Someone might have just been trying to eradicate all those cute drummer types that break young girl's hearts. Just kidding. The only problem is that drum machines are too on the nose. They are too perfect. That’s why the machines have a knob that tries to recreate human error. There is a sticker that some people put on their drum machines that says: Drum Machines Have No Soul. The imperfections in sound give the music soul and your imperfections show that you have soul, too.
Use the comments to share with each other the ways that you’ve learned how to combat perfectionism. This is a critical tool to overcoming any issue with food and being able to try your best which is all you really need to lose the weight.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 10:21:30 PM | 19 COMMENTS
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 15, 2008
Is Food Really Your Friend?
“Food feels like my best friend.” I hear so many people say this. Maybe you can relate. When you’re upset, anxious, despondent, angry or bored the instant calm that food provides can feel like your greatest ally. But is it really a friend? Let’s take a look:
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HOW DO YOU FEEL AFTER YOU’VE EATEN TO DEAL WITH FEELINGS?
Here are some of the feelings that people who overeat or binge report: “hopeless,” “disgusted,” “repulsed,” “out of control,” “full of self-hatred,” “unsatisfied,” “sick.” If a friend left you feeling this way wouldn’t you begin to wonder if it was a healthy relationship?
DOES IT REALLY GIVE YOU WHAT YOU NEED?
Friendships are based on give and take. We provide something for someone and they provide something for us. Of course, this may not always be perfectly balanced but certainly the best friendships are reciprocal. Someone told me this week that the only ways that she feels nurtured is by eating and shopping. Together, we explored other ways she could feel nurtured and get her needs met. What does food really give you besides extra weight?
IT SHORTCHANGES YOU
Everyone deserves a faithful friend. One who listens to us and makes us feel like our best selves. Looking at that list above, overeating, binging or eating the wrong foods simply doesn’t do that for anyone. Today, for example, I felt particularly anxious and tearful. You know those days where you just want to curl up and have the world disappear. I could’ve eaten and the tears might have gotten pushed down. I called a friend and I didn’t feel like he was available to have a particularly open conversation. I could’ve stopped there and eaten with a good excuse of not getting my needs met by my friend. But I didn’t. I called another friend. That friend heard me out, offered me some actions I could take to make my situation better and validated my feelings. When I got off the phone, the tearfulness had subsided, the heaviness in my chest and throat dissipated and I was free to enjoy the rest of my day. Food might have stopped my uncomfortable feelings for a little while but it wouldn’t have given me long-lasting reflection, relief and companionship. Eating would have offered an instant result but would have been short-changing myself.
It’s okay for food to be a part of a celebration. It’s even okay for food to be a source of comfort sometimes, but only when you are the one that is making the choice. When food feels like it’s got a hold over you, like it’s the one calling the shots, it’s not a friend but an evil temptress. Not too different from the friend that peer pressures you into skipping the gym, stealing, smoking, having an affair or not following through on your commitments. When you aren’t under the influence of a friend you can hang out with them even if they have different values and not be affected. Same goes with food. Each time you avoid food and figure out what you really need, you are being a friend to yourself. And this is a great place for you to start making new choices.
 | | | | Make emotional eating, food addiction, overeating, and binge eating a thing of the past! Not only will you see a difference in your body, you will see a difference in how you relate to food and everything else in your life. Click here to join now. | |
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 9:20:02 PM | 17 COMMENTS
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 09, 2008
3 Ways to Avoid Weight Gain This Halloween
 I wanted to get this blog out early this year because I've seen that the stores are already stocked with Halloween candy. They are prepared for the holiday and you can be too. I live in a neighborhood in Los Angles that takes Halloween very seriously--houses are decorated and candy is given out in abundant quantities. My son can accumulate upwards of ten pounds of candy trick-or-treating. Now, even the worst bingers out there are not likely to go out and buy ten pounds of candy in one pop. it seems insane to bring this amount of sweets into the home of an emotional eater. I can remember desperate moments when I searched out the Halloween candy bag in the hopes that there might be a stale piece of chocolate hiding inside months after the holiday was over. I've since found some creative solutions to avoid having Halloween be a time of self-sabotage and weight gain.
1. DON'T BUY CANDY YOU LIKE FOR TRICK OR TREATERS - If I bought Reese's Peanut Butter Cups or Almond Joy I'd be in big trouble. I simply don't have that much willpower. Snagging a few from my son while out trick-or-treating is one thing but having big bags of them inside my house is something else. I recommend not buying things that you like. One woman said she buys candies with peanuts because she has a fierce allergy. Another woman told me that she buys gummy worms, tear jerkers and other equally offensive sweets. What can you buy this year that won't tempt you?
 2. THE SWITCH WITCH - Three years ago someone introduced me to the idea of The Switch Witch and it has been a saving grace. When you come home and the kids sort out their candiy, you decide how many they can keep. In my house, it's ten pieces. Then, the rest of the candy gets set out on the porch and The Switch Witch comes and replaces it while the kids are sleeping with a gift-- a DVD, a video game cartridge, a webkinz. The kids are happy and you don't have to deal with having candy around for weeks or months. This helps with two things. The most obvious one is that you don't deal with temptation for an extended period of time and the less obvious reason is that you don't have to deal with daily negotiations with your kids about how much candy they can eat. Can the Switch Witch make a visit to your house this year?
3. GET DRESSED UP - Find a costume for yourself. Getting dressed up gives you somewhere to put your creativity (other than thinking about how much candy you can eat without anyone noticing) and it creates a spirit of festivity and fun that improve the whole holiday. Who will you be this year?
I hope these suggestions make this Halloween go a little smoother for you and your children. They certainly have helped mine.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 2:56:33 PM | 22 COMMENTS
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 01, 2008
I'm Doing Everything Right: Why Is the Scale Stuck on the Same Number?
There comes a time when I hear that statement from almost everyone that is trying to lose weight. Have you ever gone through a period of time when you went overboard eating everything in sight, for instance on a ten-day vacation, and it seemed like you weren’t gaining weight? Then, on the day you’re going home it seemed like over night you gained ten pounds and your clothes didn’t fit. That’s happened to me many times. The weight can come on suddenly after a long period of not exercising or eating well. The same thing happens with losing weight.
It’s almost as if our caveperson biology wants to make sure that we’re not in a time of famine before it gives up the extra weight on our bodies. What this translates into is the necessary willingness to patiently stick with a plan for a while before seeing results. However, let’s face it, we live in a time of instant gratification and when we don’t get it we want to give up. I’ve heard people say that things like:
“I weighed myself in the middle of a binge and decided I was already fat, so why bother stopping.”
“I lost two pounds so I rewarded myself with a indulgent dinner out.”
“I did well for four days and I didn’t lose a pound so I’m giving up.”
When you consider people who accomplish great things, you see people who are willing to work really hard, for a long time, without seeing results. Think of Olympic athletes who train for years before they ever win a medal. All of their practice and training is leading to a goal, but there is a moment-to-moment goal before the ultimate goal, and that goal is to get stronger, more flexible and more confident. It’s the same thing for you on your way towards your goal weight. Each time you make the right choice, don’t worry if it doesn’t affect the number on the scale just yet, the choice itself will be making you stronger, more flexible and more confident. These qualities will benefit you no matter what the scale says. By the time the scale reaches a number that you feel good about, you will have been transformed from the inside out and the outside in.
In other words, be patient. As cliché as it sounds, this is about the journey, not just the destination.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 10:29:09 PM | 15 COMMENTS
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 2008
Never Binge Again
Never binging again is possible but the biggest mistake that people who binge make is saying to themselves, "I'll never binge again!" Yet, we all do it. The food is finished and then we promise ourselves that it will never happen again. Even though almost everyone that binges says that to themselves, it sets you up for self-hatred, guilt and failure. You see, no one that ends a pattern of binging does it cold turkey. You don't decide to stop and then never binge again. It's just not how ending a pattern of binging works. That's because the binge serves a very important purpose. It makes you feel better emotionally. So, if you're committed to never binging again what are the signs along the way the signify that you're succeeding:
*More time between binges (even something small for example, I used to binge every other day and now only do it every third day)
*Shorter binges (My binges used to last two days, now they only last an hour)
*Binges on smaller amounts of food (I used to eat a gallon of ice-cream, now I eat half a pint)
*The ability to stop a binge in the middle (I used to not even realize I was having a binge till it was over, now I can stop myself in the middle)
*Forgiving yourself more quickly after a binge ends (I don't talk to myself in a mean way when I binge, I have compassion for myself)
*Bouncing back more quickly when a binge happens (in other words recommitting to understanding and stopping your binge pattern)
*Understanding what feelings set off the binge (I was able to see that I had the binge after I had a fight with my boss)
*The ability to see a binge coming (even if you can't stop it yet)
Being able to acknowledge the small successes along the way is a really important step on the road to recovery. It can be all too easy to see how far you still need to go and forget how far you've already come. Ending a binge pattern is hard work but you can do it. One day you might not binge at all but it won't happen by making a declaration, it will happen by being loving to yourself and staying aware. So, don't say, "I'll never binge again." Instead, take it one gentle step at a time. Remember, you're looking for progress, not perfection.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 8:24:17 AM | 56 COMMENTS
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2008
Do You Need to Diet to Lose Weight?
This is a question that many people that come to our site ask. If 95% of diets fail, what's the answer? Well, the fact is you need three things to lose weight (and keep it off for life):
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1. A sensible eating plan
2. A regular exercise routine
3. An understanding of Emotional Eating (without this people yo-yo)
We all know we need to eat well. We all know we need to exercise. But what most people don't know is that they need to understand emotional eating for the other two things to work. The people that come to our site begin to understand emotional eating which finally sets them up to win their struggle with their weight. Inevitably though, at some point, many of our members will ask me about what they should eat. As a certified nutritional consultant I believe everyone must find a sensible eating plan that works for them. There is no steadfast rule. Each body is different. When I recommend eating plans I resist calling them diets because "diet" tends to connote that you're going to do it for a while and then go back to your old ways. I have a friend who lost a significant amount of weight and has kept it off for years (she was definitely emotionally eating because her husband had been diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's) and she said she had to accept that she was giving up bagels for breakfast, not just for a while but forever (and other foods, too). I'm not that rigid, I still have a bagel once or twice a month but you get the idea, it's a special treat, not a staple of my daily eating. To lose weight, and lose it for life, you have to change your ways, not just for a little while, for good.
Whatever plan you choose it should be one that teaches you a new way of eating that you can adopt for life. It should be one that teaches you about portion size and healthy snacks and basic nutrition. Don’t panic. That doesn't mean you can never splurge. I always say, “everything in moderation, even moderation.”
Many people can understand that eating to cope with life doesn’t work (that's the basic foundation of breaking an emotional eating pattern). But the harder part of sticking to a sensible eating plan is caused by the Rebellious Self (this is discussed in the Shrink Yourself book and in the Week 11 of the Shrink Yourself program). The Rebellious Self is the childlike part of each of us that doesn’t want to be told what to do. It will get you to eat what it wants just to prove that it’s not being controlled by anyone. Think of a six-year old whose parent restricts their sugar intake and can’t wait for the day when no one is going to tell them how much candy and ice-cream they can eat. That six-year old stays with us and chooses what we eat in adulthood. The problem is that it doesn’t understand that it’s hurting us more than helping us. A big part of growing up is developing the knowledge of which foods work for us and which foods don’t. It took me a long time to figure it out, but at thirty-five I pretty much know what I need to eat and what kind of exercise I need to do to look the way I want, and more importantly, to feel the way I want. If I'm an adult, I do it. On the days when I’m being rebellious, I don't. When I’m being an adult I can plan for splurging. For instance if I’ve eaten well and exercised during the work-week, I can feel justified going out for dinner on the weekend with no restrictions and sitting around reading the paper all day. I am a chef and thoroughly enjoy food so I can assure you that I do leave room for eating all of my favorite foods. I just don't eat them every day anymore.
If eating well doesn’t come naturally to you, then you need to teach yourself or let someone teach you. Perhaps, your next grown-up move is admitting you need guidance about what to eat and then picking an eating plan that makes sense to you. An eating plan is not a step back if you're viewing it differently this time. One friend I know had to adopt an eating plan that would prevent her from getting diabetes. This meant eliminating sugar and simple carbohydrates. She feels good physically but also feels less worried about her health which makes her feel good mentally. Another friend thrives on eating mostly whole grains and vegetables with very little meat. This helps her control her chronic gall bladder problems and keeps extra weight off. Another person does best on mostly animal protein and very little carbohydrates. He realized that when he eats bread or pasta or potatoes with meat, his thinking feels clouded, so he doesn't eat that way anymore. As you can see there is no eating plan that works for everyone. A big part of knowing which foods make you feel your best is understanding yourself, your needs, your moods, your illnesses, essentially it's coming to know the machine that is your body just like you know the workings of the particular car you have.
A solid understanding of emotional eating will ensure that you adhere to any eating plan you design or choose.
*Do you think that you can stick to a "diet" for awhile and then go back to the ways that you used to eat?
*What eating plan really works best for your particular body? Which has you feel your best?
*What parts of emotional eating keep you from sticking to that plan?
*Is it your Rebellious Self?
*Is it the fact that you aren't ready to give up the comfort that food provides?
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 11:51:22 PM | 17 COMMENTS
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 04, 2008
The Education You Never Got in School
My eight-year old son went back to school this week. There is hustle and bustle in the neighborhood about which teacher gives the most homework and how different third grade is from second grade. They will learn multiplication tables and how to write in cursive (not sure why they don't give touch typing lessons instead) along with so much new information. It got me thinking about how much time we spend in our lives getting an academic education. I was in school for twenty years, and even now, fifteen years out of university I still frequently take courses when I can. However, there isn't any obligatory, state-funded emotional education to navigate the stressful waters we sail in during our lives. By keeping that in mind perhaps you can forgive yourself when you find yourself reaching for food to deal with stress (or boredom, or anger, or loneliness, or grief, or sadness or any other feeling) instead of having the skills to handle those feelings head-on.
How can we start to give ourselves, and each other, the emotional education we didn't receive in school so we can fulfill ourselves instead of filling ourselves with food?
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1. IDENTIFY -- First off, learn how to identify what you're feeling. Many of us don't even know what's going on for us, we just feel uncomfortable and want it to go away. I can't tell you how many people tell me what an epiphany they had when they realized they weren't hungry but tired and how they've since learned to simply put themselves to bed rather than eat at night. Start to identify what you feel. Are you angry? Tired? Bored? Do you need validation? Affection? Help?
2. RESPOND - Start to make associations about which feelings need which responses. I often say that feelings are like weather. They are a naturally occurring part of living in the world. There is rain. Sun. And storm. If you live in a place with less than idyllic weather, you have to learn what kind of coat, shoes, gloves and hat can get you through the day comfortably. You know you need an umbrella when it rains or sunblock when it's bright. Feelings are no different. As adults (and we can teach this to our children too), we need to know what we need when we're sad. Overwhelmed. Anxious. By understanding what we really need when these inevitable changes in mood occur, we can offer ourselves real comfort, real understanding and real responses to real needs rather than simply eating to survive the feeling until the next time.
3. PLAN AHEAD - As you come to identify your feelings and know what you need to respond to them, you can plan ahead. If you know that Sunday nights make you anxious because the work week is the next day, you can have a ritual that makes Sunday night easier. For instance, a yoga class, a board game with the family, a bath and meditation. If you know that you get anxious and overwhelmed when the kids need to be put to bed, you can devise a system that makes it easier or ask for help.
It's no wonder that we turn to food (and so many other things) to get through emotions. We simply weren't given the tools to understand, manage and work through the feelings associated with being human. Sure, we might have spent some time in therapy or read a few self-help books but it pales in comparison to the time we spent learning facts and figures that so many of us forget. What kind of world would it be if we taught our children to communicate their feelings, cooperate with one another, and soothe themselves through any uncomfortable emotion? The good news is that it's never too late to learn. By using the three steps above you can start to get the graduate degree you missed in emotional education.
How have you learned to identify and deal with your emotions?
How does planning ahead help you stay calm?
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 9:25:08 AM | 11 COMMENTS
THURSDAY, AUGUST 28, 2008
Back to School
Back to School
If you have children chances are they’ve just gone back or are about to go back to school. The school year can both help and hinder weight loss efforts. Here are a few things to keep in mind:
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Pros of the School Year:
SCHEDULE: Summer vacation means a lot of free, unstructured time—including vacations with special treats like ice-cream cones. If you’re like me, you welcome the onset of the school year and the structure it provides. The schedule of the academic year can give you a routine that makes exercise and eating well more manageable. Let it work to your advantage. When you get out your ical program, PDAs or big paper calendars be sure to include planned time for yourself in addition to the soccer games and piano lessons—even if it’s just a couple of hours a week.
TIME TO YOURSELF: If you’re a working parent earlier bedtimes can give you a bit more free time in the evenings. Take advantage of the time by doing things that are restorative. Take a bath, stretch for a few minutes, make love, read a book, etc. If you stay at home be sure to take advantage of the free time while the children are in school. Plan to exercise as soon as you drop your children off so that you can get it done before you get back home and notice everything that needs to be done. By getting exercise out to the way early in the day you will feel accomplished and approach all of the rest of your tasks in an empowered way. Then, get as much work completed as you can. Remember that staying on top of chores, responsibilities and cleaning will help prevent binges. People often report that when they are overwhelmed they overeat or binge more frequently.
Cons of the School Year:
SNACKS & AFTER SCHOOL TREATS: Don’t make the excuse that you have to keep junk food in the house for the kids. They don’t need it and neither do you. Find healthy snacks that you both can enjoy.
HUSTLE & BUSTLE – For those that don’t thrive on a routine the hectic nature of the school year can make you reach for food to ease the stress. Stay on top of the stress of the school year by getting organized and taking time out for yourself even if it’s simply arriving at your children’s school five minutes early to meditate in the car or waking up ten minutes earlier than usual to read the paper before the house wakes up.
How does the school year affect your emotional eating?
Please offer tips to one another on how to make this school year the best one yet!
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 11:23:14 PM | 8 COMMENTS
TUESDAY, AUGUST 19, 2008
PMS and Emotional Eating
PMS affects both men and women so they’ll be information in this article for both genders. I decided to write on this topic because on the message boards I often hear questions about how to know the difference between PMS cravings and Emotional Eating Episodes.
PMS is a misunderstood and vilified but very real condition. It affects over 40% of all women. In recent years, women have had to deny that they experience any real shift in body or mind in the days before their periods to reduce the opinion that we are the less reliable sex as a result of menstruation. When we can accept the very real changes that happen to us we can recognize and admit our real monthly needs.
The best thing you can do is be prepared for PMS. Keep a calendar and know when it’s coming. By planning ahead you can work in extra rest, extra help and the right kind of meals that will help instead of hinder you. Part of being gentle and loving with yourself is the knowledge of what you need during this tender time and making sure you get it.
Here are a few things to keep in mind:
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PHYSICALLY – It is normal to have cravings when you expect your period. The reason that we have food cravings (usually for salt like chips or sweets like chocolate) is because our brains need an extra boost of serotonin. When we sense this we seek out simple carbohydrates because they give us a surge of this brain chemical. However, the quick but short acting effects of these kinds of foods do us more harm than good because they produce peaks and crashes. Therefore, if you know your period is coming you can plan ahead by eating well-rounded meals that include complex carbohydrates and good fats (for example, brown rice with black beans and olive oil, quinoa with sautéed vegetables, almond butter on a piece of whole grain bread).
Chocolate cravings can come from an imbalance of calcium and magnesium. A supplement that includes both can be helpful in reducing cravings.
Once you separate out the real physical components you can more clearly see the emotional eating components. I often tell people that a craving is a decadent piece of chocolate cake but an emotional eating episode is eating the whole cake. PMS might make you crave chocolate but it won’t have you eat a whole cake.
EMOTIONALLY – The heightened emotional state of PMS is very real. If you’re an Emotional Eater then your way to deal with uncomfortable feelings is to eat. This might be one of the reasons why you tend to eat more before your period. The emotional highs and lows of hormonal shifts can send you running to the fridge. The more accustomed you get to facing feelings head-on, the less you’ll need food to cope during this time of month or any time of month for that matter. Remember that while your period doesn’t create feelings it tends to hold a magnifying glass up to feelings and situations in your life. It’s a time of month to take stock but not to sort things out. Here is an example, when you’re getting your period something your spouse, child or parent does might drive you mad. This is the time to journal about your feelings or talk them out with a friend. Then, when you’re not fueled by hormones you can use the clarity you got to make requests and share your feelings. In other words, don't try to solve anything when you're expecting your period.
FOR MEN – Women barely understand what’s happening to their bodies once a month so how can we expect men to understand. Men have had to deal with the mood shifts of their mothers, sisters, wives and daughters since the beginning of time. If you’re a man you might be wondering what you can do. If a woman in your life keeps a calendar, pay attention to it, too. When she is getting her period, take initiative. Keep the house clean, offer to help with the kids, make healthy meals, give her affection or space (depending on which she needs) and make sure she gets rest. Don’t ask questions like “Is this your time of month?” or engage her in conversations about the relationship. Just love her and the days will pass much more easily.
The effects of PMS are real and they consume so many days of our lives. We can’t afford not to learn how to master them.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 1:30:51 PM | 12 COMMENTS
TUESDAY, AUGUST 05, 2008
Exercise: A Way to Finally Stick With It
There are some people that love to exercise. There are some people that feel the need to move their bodies. There are some people that can't wait to get out into the outdoors and run, jog, walk, skate, bike or hike. I am not one of those people. If you're reading this, maybe you're not either. I was a sedentary child who preferred reading to almost any kind of physical activity. As cliche as it is, I was picked last for every team. And my skinny soccer-playing cousins would put me on a regime of swimming and bicycle riding during summers at their house in an attempt to help me shed my ten-year old stomach rolls. By now, you can probably see that quite simply I did not like to exercise.
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In my teens I enjoyed a few years of unearned thinness. Then, I gained what should have been the freshman fifteen, but for me was the freshman twenty-eight and realized that I would have to take a more active roll. Fine, I thought as long as that doesn't mean being active. I was a yo-yo exerciser. I went through long stretches of doing yoga five times a week. Then, I'd stop. Then, I'd take up weight training. I'd do it consistently for a six months, enough time to see results. I'd promise myself that I'd never stop so I wouldn't have to start all over again from square one. But somehow I just could never stick with something for very long. I just didn't like it.
The problem was that I was getting older. I had a baby, gained and lost eighty pounds and had hypothyroidism. There was just no way to put it off any longer. I was going to have to find a way to exercise, do it regularly and stick with it for life. I knew this intellectually but I didn't know how to make it happen. Being a writer taught me an important lesson. There are times when you are inspired to write. Those moments are terrific. The words flow freely. Endorphines pump from the thrill of a moving hand over a blank page. When you commit to being a writer, however, you have to teach yourself how to write well when you feel like it, and when you don't. Same thing with exercise. I finally accepted that if left to my own devices I was never going to WANT to exercise. The fact was that I didn't have to like it, I just had to do it. Kind of like flossing, or an annual pap smear or prostate exam or paying taxes. Exercise was no different, just a part of being a responsible adult.
Writers that write consistently pick the same time each week or day. I decided I would walk once a week. I could commit to that. There is a golf course by my son's school. The periphery is 2.25 miles -- a thirty-five minute walk. I would walk on Tuesday mornings right after I dropped my son off. If I went home first, I'd be sure to get involved with work or chores. In the beginning, I made a date to walk with a friend and if a friend wasn't available I talked on the phone. Anything to make the time go by. When I walked consistently for a few weeks and saw that I could do it, I added a second day. I slowly worked up to four days a week. I walk right after school starts and by the time I sit down to start my day I have gotten the most dreaded part of it out of the way. I have done this consistently for two years now. The funny thing is that I no longer dread it. I just do it and I find ways to make it more and more interesting for myself. Some times a friend joins me but I don't need one to insure that I go. I even leave the phone in the car. The most recent thing that I do is download podcasts from NPR and listen to the interesting lectures that I somehow always seem to miss when they're aired. My walk is a decadent part of my day. I have found a way to read (a thing I love) while my legs are moving. I'm so consumed with the words that I completely forget that I'm exercising (sometimes I even find myself jogging).
In the comments please share with us ways that you have gotten yourself to exercise more consistently.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 8:43:53 PM | 28 COMMENTS
THURSDAY, JULY 31, 2008
Food Pushers Everywhere You Go
Who in your life is enabling your Emotional Eating habit? I recently a story by Rob Long on NPR's Martini Shot about craft services (or catering) on film shoots. The set of television or movies can be very stressful. I remember in the early nineties taking a vacation from my position on the AIDS unit of a New York hospital to work for a month on a friend's feature film. The stress and tension on the film set far exceeded the stress and tension on the unit of the hospital where multiple people were dying everyday. I wanted to tell the crew that a movie wasn't life or death but no one would hear it. Apparently, they were convinced it was. On film sets Craft Services often provide comfort foods (doughnuts, mac and cheese, chips and other sweets). The food placates people. Dials down the stress and tension. The NPR story went on to say that every once in awhile craft services will switch and offer healthy options instead of the usual comfort foods. People start losing weight but get angry, have shorter tempers and explode more. Not a risk that producers want to take when that cranky person is holding "an 80 pound light over a celebrity." One might see why they would rather put out crappy food and keep people calm than offer healthy food and deal with explosive personalities.
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But that's not the answer.
The answer, of course, is that we haven't learned how to face our emotions without food. In the absence of the comfort of food so many of us simply don't know how to deal.
While we have to take personal responsibility I want to illustrate that often (granted perhaps unknowingly) the people in our lives make it easy for us to perpetuate the emotional eating pattern. The NPR story reminded me how food has become a panacea for every emotion. And the most troubling part is that not only is it installed as a soothing mechanism but it is legally and enthusiastically pushed on people by their families, their spouses, their employers and through advertising. It would never be permitted to advertise heroin, or crack on a billboard or commercial. Even cigarette advertisements have been stopped because their health risks make public promotion morally reprehensible. And yet fast food meals that come in at a caloric count beyond what any healthy person should consume in a whole day are shamelessly displayed with their dripping cheese and crispy bacon in the most seductive way. Spouses bring home the very food that their partner is working so hard to stop eating. In work environments people put out trays of fat laden sweets. The other day I went to dentist where they had a huge bowl of Hershey Kisses in the waiting room—the very food that one shouldn't eat if they're interested in caring for their teeth. Yet, as patients waited ten minutes and then twenty minutes and then half an hour to be seen by the dentist they passed the time with some tasty morsels. How could they resist? A little bit of pleasure to put up with the wait. Right? Wrong.
There are plenty of people out there trying to pacify you by feeding you. Nietzche said that religion is the opium of the masses but perhaps these days (at least in this country) food comes in at a close second. We are getting fatter but we are numb enough to sit quietly in front of the TV on our couches. I don't mean to be harsh, it's just that there needs to be a better way. On line at Whole Foods last night I stood beside a girl who was buying chocolate covered strawberries and explaining that she was a good friend because she was bringing wine and strawberries to eat while she and a friend watched Project Runway. Is that what makes a good friend? As they sit there munching and watching models that they will never look like (especially if they consume the foods they're choosing) it seems like an obvious recipe for sadness and defeat. I'm not suggesting that they aspire to look like the models on the screen but what if instead of wine and food to complement their experience they did crunches during commercials or gave each other neck rubs or debriefed about their day?
There must be a way that we can help one another meet our goals, support one another when we're stressed and not keep throwing oil down the mountain our friends, colleagues and spouses are trying to summit. Is a gift of food really a gift of kindness or is someone just trying to keep you quiet? You don't have to be suspicious or angry towards the people that push food at you but by being aware you get to be the one who chooses. And you always have the choice to suggest something new or ask for help.
To listen to the NPR radio show: http://www.kcrw.com/etc/programs/ma/ma080611craft_services
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 8:31:30 AM | 25 COMMENTS
MONDAY, JULY 14, 2008
Shrink Your Waist, Expand Your Brain
What if I told you that there was not only a way you could lose weight and grow new brain cells, but that you could also add vitality and optimism to your life? If I were you I’d say that’s too good to be true, sounds like snake oil. So, let me explain.
It’s actually possible, but it’s not as simple as taking a pill or having your brain zapped by some fancy machine.
You would have to do some serious psychological work. You’d have to break the emotional eating habit that we have been talking about, and also master some small piece of your own personal development.
For example, challenging your shyness or social anxiety patterns. There is now enough evidence from neuroscience to proclaim that when you actually change a “comfort habit” your brain creates new cells and new pathways.
One patient of mine who I see for her Emotional Eating issues shared that she was terrified of going to her daughter’s school functions. She was so anxious about not having anything interesting to say that she would hide out at the buffet table with a mouth full of food. Then, she didn’t have to worry about any boring comments seeping out.
Now, that she’s making better food choices she was uncertain about how she would handle the function without the respite of the buffet. She screwed up her courage and actually did fine talking to another mother and making a new friend.
By taking risks and talking to people she accomplished three things. She didn’t consume excess calories by needing the comfort of the food. By talking to people a new world opened up and that gave her new hope. And by accomplishing those two things and breaking her “comfort habit” of avoidance and eating, her brain was actually growing while her belly was shrinking.
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A daunting task
I understand that what I have described can be a daunting task, but that’s what you will need to do if you want a refreshed brain and a smaller stomach. The alternative is not only living with the brain and the body that you have, but living within the constrictions of social anxiety and self-doubt about whether you are “interesting” enough, and all that that implies.
In the first blog of this series I asked you to think about one version of your divided self: the dilemma of deciding whether the emotional eating habit was a blessing or a curse for you. Whether it was something you wanted to keep or something you want to shed.
Today, we take a peek below the surface of that conflict and see that it is really a question about whether or not you are ready to grow out of some old defensive pattern, and take charge of your life in a new and different way. At the root of most emotional eating is a pessimistic thought that you won’t ever be able to transcend those defensive patterns you adopted earlier in life that have become constrictors of your life right now.
Your roles
Social anxiety and shyness are just examples of being stuck. There are many others that may apply to you like carrying on a role you adopted or were assigned in your family. For example, the black sheep, or the caretaker, or the angry one, or the rebel, or the ”good girl”, etc. Maybe you are afraid to succeed, or assert yourself, or set boundaries, or try something new, or be more independent, etc.
What is the connection between emotional eating and personal development?
First, it is just what I described today. When you feel powerless to grow beyond some invisible but potent constricting defensive pattern (e.g. shyness, social anxiety, etc), you become excessively hungry, and eat too much to blot out your frustration and pessimism.
However, the second is what I have described before in previous posts. Whenever you eat too much to shut off your mind, you deprive yourself of the self-knowledge that would allow you to change the restrictive pattern. You do away with the signal that tells you to challenge this pattern. As long as you continue doing this, you can’t make the necessary changes in yourself that give you the refreshed vitality that every person needs.
Given all of this, I hope you will have a better understanding of why I emphasize the importance of the pause technique every time there are signs of an impending emotional eating episode. That’s the potential moment of change when you have an opportunity to derail this self-defeating cycle of eating every time you feel frustrated.
You can then see that you are shutting off the frustration so quickly you can’t possibly pursue the remedy.
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 11:39:17 AM | 22 COMMENTS
MONDAY, JULY 07, 2008
Don't Speak - Don't Eat
People often turn to food when they're unsatisfied or frustrated. Therefore, learning to get your real needs met is a huge part of leaving overeating behind.
A member asked me a while back what to do when you've asked to get a need met from someone and they still don't meet it. There are many options which include determining if it's a need you can get met somewhere else or a need you can let go of. However, the option I'm going to focus on today is one that I call, in the words of Gwen Stefani, "Don't speak."
I read an excellent book recently called "How to Improve Your Marriage Without Talking About It" by Patricia Love and Steven Stosny. I highly recommend it. Here's a bit from the back cover that explains a lot: "Simply put, talking makes women move closer, but makes men move away. Even with the best of intentions talking about your relationship doesn't bring you close, and it will eventually drive you apart." This type of retreat/approach dynamic can be seen in many relationships, not just heterosexual marriages but between any kind of couple, co-workers, mothers and sons, etc. So, if talking doesn't make you closer you might be wondering what does?
According to the book, to connect with men, they need touch, activity (as in go on a hike, rake leaves together, sit in the same room when they do their bills), sex and routine (respecting their routine and the fact that it makes them feel safe).
The benefit is that when men feel connected they want to talk more. Talking doesn't make them feel connected. So, if you want to talk, you'll need to connect first.
It's normal to need things from others and to want to connect but perhaps it's the way we go about trying to get our needs met that leaves us hungry more than the needs themselves. We often try the same method repeatedly even though it doesn't work and then get increasingly frustrated and resentful. If we look, there is always a creative solution.
One of our members said that she and her husband used to sit beside each other on the couch at night eating and watching TV. Now, they came up with a new plan. She massages his feet while they watch. He feels connected (remember men feel connected through touch). Her hands are busy so she doesn't reach for the remote. And the feet are a natural appetite suppressant. Their relationship is getting better AND they are losing weight.
When you're frustrated or needy is there an action you can take instead of eating?
What are some non-verbal ways you can connect with your partner or people in general?
If you're still tempted to talk things out with your partner go and see Wall-E. It is a robot meets robot love story about Eve and Wall-E. Each character only says two words to the other. Their own name and the other's name. Despite their lack of words it is 100% clear through their actions that they are committed and connected. In this case, the old cliche stands true, actions speak louder than words. And while you can't control another's actions, you have power over your own.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 9:32:34 PM | 22 COMMENTS
MONDAY, JUNE 30, 2008
Carol Solomon
Carol Solomon, PhD has been a great supporter of what we do here at Shrink Yourself. She has featured our work and interviewed me for her newsletter which you can sign up for at the bottom of this web page: http://www.loseweightwitheft.com
Her work as a therapist, like mine, is committed to stopping emotional eating and self-sabotaging behaviors.
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 3:13:53 PM | 4 COMMENTS
MONDAY, JUNE 16, 2008
Sex and the City
Recently, I saw the Sex and the City movie. Samantha Jones is tempted by her hot new male neighbor but for the first time in her life she's in a committed relationship. Suddenly she gains fifteen pounds and when her concerned friends inquire about her weight gain she says, "I eat so I won't cheat."
Many people don't realize that this is a very common type of emotional eating. We eat to stay faithful. When we're overweight less people are attracted to us and there is less temptation to cheat. Staying overweight also has us avoid the work of having to set boundaries with people--something that many of us don't know how to do (or are afraid to do).
The thing is Samantha had to learn eating isn't the solution. She had to accept that she wanted to cheat because she was in a relationship that wasn't fulfilling to her and she was unwilling to put the work in to make it fulfilling.
Is there a way that you're using your weight to be less attractive to others?
Does staying overweight keep you from having to do the work of learning how to set boundaries with people?
Are you stuffing in your dissatisfaction with a relationship with food?
It wasn't until Samantha admitted to her boyfriend that she wasn't committed to the relationship and made the steps to leave that she stopped stuffing herself.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 5:51:22 PM | 19 COMMENTS
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 11, 2008
Kung Fu Panda: An Emotional Eater
I went to see Kung Fu Panda today (with my eight-year old son) and discovered that it's really a story about Emotional Eating.
Kung Fu Panda is an overweight panda who has been chosen to be the new Kung Fu Master and fight the bad guy. He doesn't believe he's up to the task but keep in mind that Kung Fu has been this Panda's secret passion for ages.
One night his master finds him at The Tree of Wisdom (he doesn't realize it's the Tree of Wisdom, he's just on the prowl for food) stuffing himself with peaches from the tree. His Wise Master says, "I know you eat because you're upset."
The panda reveals how inadequate he feels. And how ashamed he is of that inadequacy. And continues to stuff himself with peaches.
But then something interesting happens.
When he takes on the task of becoming a Kung Fu Master and realizes that he's pretty awesome at it, he finds that he's not hungry anymore.
What secret passions do you have? How is food keeping you from pursuing them?
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 8:03:57 AM | 27 COMMENTS
TUESDAY, MAY 20, 2008
Overeating Keeps You on the Sidelines of Life
Since people responded so well to the analogy blog I wrote last week, I've got another one for you.
Notice at a sporting event there are two groups of people:
The Players
&
The Spectators
Ever notice what the spectators are doing? They're eating and drinking. And lots of it, too.
Dodger Dogs...Ice-Cream Sundaes...Greasy Burgers...Peanuts...Buttered Popcorn....Nachos Smothered with Cheese....You name it!
Eating makes the experience of watching the game (for those that like the game and those that have no choice but to be there) more enjoyable.
Ever notice what the players are doing? They're playing. They're strategizing. They're maximizing on opportunities. They're falling and getting up again. They're striking out and then getting up at bat and trying harder the next time.
Ever see them eating? Imagine if Babe Ruth or Michael Jordon or Andre Agassi stopped in the middle of the game and had a binge right there on the court or field.
Pretty hard to imagine.
Overeating is a way that we stay safely on the sidelines of life. We keep ourselves out of the game and the only way to endure it, to pass the time, or make the time more pleasurable is to eat.
What ways are you using food to keep yourself out of the game of life?
Are you avoiding love and intimacy?
Are you avoiding finding new love or strengthening the relationship you're in?
Are you avoiding starting that business that you've always dreamed about?
Are you avoiding taking that dance class or going to Paris?
Take a risk. Find a way to put yourself in the game of life. Play a little.
Who knows it might be fun and heck, you might even find yourself having too much fun to stop and eat.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 9:59:42 AM | 31 COMMENTS
TUESDAY, MAY 13, 2008
Would You Give a Crying Child a Donut and Send Them Away?
I thought of an analogy recently to explain the concept of Emotional Eating.
If your child came up to you panicked and crying would you ever think of handing them a donut and sending them away.
Most parents would say, "No, that would be cruel."
More likely, you'd ask them what happened, did someone hurt them, are they okay?
You might see what you could do to help.
Take them in your arms.
Reassure them in some way.
Rub their back, wipe their tears or smooth their hair.
You'd hear them out and at the end, they might even laugh and hug you in gratitude.
With the hurt gone, they can go about playing again.
When you eat to comfort yourself, you're basically giving the hurt person in you a piece of food and sending them away.
Sure, if you gave the child the donut, they might forget their problem for a few minutes, they might even quiet down.
But they wouldn't really be heard. They wouldn't learn how to problem solve. They wouldn't feel connected.
Some parents, with good intention, give their kids food when they're upset. After all, we all start with putting the crying baby to our breasts but we may keep offering food because we haven't learned new and better ways to be there for them.
The next time you're tempted to eat out of comfort, PAUSE, there is a hurt child inside you that needs you.
She is trying to tell you something.
Stop to ask her what's going on for her.
Don't shut her up with food, hear her out and offer her real comfort instead.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 11:36:31 PM | 31 COMMENTS
SUNDAY, MAY 04, 2008
Put It on Paper
All of us have good intentions that don't ever get fulfilled.
Weeks pass by and we don't keep the promises that we make to ourselves. The garage doesn't get cleaned. We don't exercise. We don't eat right. We don't sit down and play that board game with our kids (with cellphones muted).
You might call it laziness. You might call it self-sabotage. You might call it lack of discipline or willpower. Whatever you call it, here's a helpful hint to make it (whatever it is for you) happen this week...put it on paper.
You'd be amazed what gets done when you make a to-do list or keep a schedule. It gives us great satisfaction when we can tick things off on a to-do list. And schedules make us feel safe. One of our members was awe-struck at how well her week went after sitting down Sunday night and writing down the meals she was going to eat and the days she was going to exercise (she even added in when she was allowed an indulgence and what that indulgence would be).
So, this week try putting something on paper - and see how much easier it is to stick to it.
For Shrink Yourself members...
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For members of our program, I would recommend doing this with all the parts of the program, too. Keep a schedule of when you're going to do things so that you can make the most of all that we're offering you.
For example:
Monday: Guided Session & 10 minutes on Message boards
Tuesday: Weekly Workbook & Group Chat
Wednesday: Message boards
Thursday: Habit Diary Tasks
Friday: Hunger Coach
Put on your schedule the times you're going to to do each and how long you're going to spend. You'll see that if you're committing to working on yourself and the program everyday, it will only amount to about 2 hours a week and you'll see great results.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 10:25:59 PM | 19 COMMENTS
MONDAY, APRIL 21, 2008
Response to No More Cravings from Dr. Gould
I am so pleased with all of the comments on this first blog. So many of you have said I have hit the nail on the head, this is the issue you know and can identify with, but what is the "cure"? I know the answer,but it took me a book and an online program, to deliver that answer so a simple sound bite won't do it. But let me give it a try anyway, and welcome to the rest of the blogs in this series, where I will do it in more detail. Once eating has become a favored method of soothing, you have to do some work to change that habit. The work is simply learning how to stay with your thoughts and feelings long enough to understand what you are trying to tell yourself. Food shuts down the thinking/feeling process. You have to go in the other direction. The reason we have an online program is to help you become comfortable with your own mind so that you can discover exactly what mental patterns you have to change in order to be at peace with yourself. Once you switch your attention to your own personal development, food becomes secondary. Think of it as a train track switch. Many of the comments above from members describe that switch. Unfortunately one member couldn't make the switch the first time around but I hope she will do it the second time around, and I hope she will ask for our help so we can show her what she might be missing. Changing this pattern permanently requires real personal growth, not just a few tips about some temporary ways to distract yourself. The step by step, therapy like approach, is the only way I know to get there. Stay tuned to the next blog, or read the emotional eating 101 for some more information.
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 11:46:45 AM | 12 COMMENTS
MONDAY, APRIL 21, 2008
Pause and Taste the Feeling, The Feeling That Makes You Eat Too Much
In this third blog I intend to fulfill my promise to you. I promised to introduce you to the one and only technique you will need to engage in a meaningful conversation with yourself about why you eat too much. You simply have to pause every time you recognize you are about to enter an emotional eating episode. The first part of technique is to recognize an emotional eating episode. The second part is to ask yourself why you want to eat too much at that particular moment. That is something you can observe and discover. Not why you want to eat in general, but why you want to eat at that critical moment.
Last week I told you how to recognize the beginning of an emotional eating episode. Here is what I said about the three signs.
[more]
The first is the overpowering urge to binge. It is a sure sign that you want to shut off your mind with food.
The second is an intense hunger when you know the hunger is not for food (you may have just finished a meal and are already physically full). This is a sure sign that you are feeling empty about something and are “emotionally” hungry.
The third is having a mind filled with thoughts about food or worries about weight. These are space occupying mental entities that distract you from thinking about what is really bothering you in life. These are boring repetitive thoughts that weigh down your mind. (There are additional signs, and if you want more, take the quiz on emotional eating on the shrinkyourself.com site.)
Once you spot an emotional eating episode and pause for a moment to reflect, you begin to use your thinking ability, the skill you need to understand yourself and to make decisions about the conduct of your life. If you never pause, the emotional eating habit continues to be carried on by a lower level of your mind. When you pause and ask yourself why am I doing this, you are using the best part of your mind, that part of your divided self that wants to get rid of the unhealthy eating pattern.
But here's where you need a little help. You can get lost in the many "why’s" that you find. You may find that on Monday you need to eat too much because you're bored while on Tuesday you eat too much at the office because you had a spat with a coworker, while on Wednesday you felt ignored by her husband, and so on. That is, your observation brings you to the first level of your journey of understanding, the first “why”.
You simply discovered that you eat to get rid of uncomfortable and painful feelings. You probably already know that but what you don't know what to do about it because you don't understand fully what else you could do. So now the answer to the why a question is a little bit richer. You need to get rid of uncomfortable feelings because you do not know what else to do with those feeling and food gives you relief and a temporary distraction.
That's good but you still have to go on and ask yourself why, as a fully grown adult, you can't find a better way of dealing with these feelings other than to eat too much? If you are able to get this far in your thinking you will notice that you begin to feel helpless and powerless. That’s a truly lousy state of mind, and you will want to run away from it with more food. Try not too, but even if you do, take note of the fact that you have tasted the deep part of the feeling that you want to run away from.
That's as far as you need to go this week. You need to ask yourself this short series of “why” questions every time you enter an emotional eating episode and follow your own thoughts and observations until you discover this state of powerlessness. If you do that this week, next week I'll begin to tell you why you feel powerless, and help you prove to yourself that you are NOT powerless.
That’s the secret change formula we use throughout the Shrink Yourself program. It works.
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 11:44:20 AM | 23 COMMENTS
FRIDAY, APRIL 18, 2008
Michelle on Hot Mom's Club Site
Many of us are women.
Hot Mom's Club is a site that provides information and community for mothers who don't want to sacrifice their sexuality and confidence just because they've had children.
To Read Article click here.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 9:49:03 AM | 2 COMMENTS
MONDAY, APRIL 14, 2008
3 Reasons You Won't Lose Weight
Today we are going to discuss the three reasons you won't lose weight: an overpowering urge to binge, an intense hunger when you know the hunger is not for food, and a mind filled with thoughts about food or worries about weight.
The good news: once you learn to control the emotional eating that causes these three obstacles... well, then you can take off the weight -- and keep it off -- for good.
Last week, in the first of this series about emotional eating, I left you with the dilemma of the divided self. One part of you wants to control your weight by eating in a healthy way while the other part of you wants to hold onto food as a form of self medication. You have to resolve this dilemma before you can control your weight.
[more]
Why you eat too much
If you were in treatment with me we would have a conversation about this. I would ask you to explore why you eat too much by observing when you do that. I would have you ask yourself is it because you are bored, or frustrated, or depressed, or anxious, or is it because you are around your family or some other relationship and don't know how to handle your emotions?
But you are not my office and you do not need to be there in order to have a conversation with yourself about these critical issues. With some help you can do it yourself.
To be more accurate you need to have a conversation with many of the selves within you but for our purposes today let's just consider that you have two people inside the same skull. Both skull mates are competing to control how much your hand puts into your mouth.
If these two roommates don't talk to each other they will just alternate in control and you will be a yo-yo dieter. You will diet and lose weight and then your other self will take over and you will gain all the pounds back plus about 10%. You may do this for decades with only fat and frustration as your reward for the thousands of days of dieting deprivation. Wouldn't you be better off talking to your skull mate?
Stop making you binge
Of course you would... but you'll have to learn how to do that. You can't simply tell your skull mate to stop making you binge or eat too much. That part of you does not like to be told what to do and has no interest in giving up food as an emotional relief. That part of you has a mind of its own.
Here is something you should know about your skull mate. He or she won't talk to you in words at the beginning so you have to understand how he or she expresses herself. There are three signature expressions of emotional eating.
The first, is the overpowering urge to binge. It is a sure sign that you want to shut off your mind with food.
The second is an intense hunger when you know the hunger is not for food (you may have just finished a meal and are already physically full). This is a sure sign that you are feeling empty about something and are “emotionally” hungry.
The third is having a mind filled with thoughts about food or worries about weight. These are space occupying mental entities that distract you from thinking about what is really bothering you in life. These are boring repetitive thoughts that weigh down your mind.
This is the knowledge you need to start your conversation with yourself. Every time you feel or think one of these three ways, the other part of you is talking and taking over. Your first task is to observe this and try to understand what is going on within you. Even though you will need more tools to come to a full understanding, you can begin with this knowledge.
In the next part of this series I'll describe a technique you can use to go the next step in your conversation with yourself.
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 10:42:21 AM | 47 COMMENTS
MONDAY, APRIL 07, 2008
No More Cravings: Simple Secret Revealed
I am still taken aback every time I think of the answer a patient once gave me when I asked her WHY she ate half a dozen donuts. She said, "what else could I do?" She couldn't figure out a better way of dealing with the demands of her 16-year-old daughter. She temporarily “lost her mind.” She was paralyzed. She was unable to think like the intelligent adult that she was.
I started asking other patients the same WHY question, and kept on getting the same kind of answer, in one way or another telling me that the strength of a craving, the lure of a binge, or the power of food over them, was overwhelming, and they too “lost their mind” to food.
Emotional Eating: Blessing or Curse?
I heard more and more people tell me that their mind was taken over by thoughts about food and weight. They told me that their mind was “occupied” by a force they couldn’t understand, and what they wanted as much as weight loss was liberation from this preoccupation. In fact, there are 17 million Americans who have this same mental struggle even though they maintain a normal weight.
So why do YOU eat too much after you have committed to a diet and told yourself you are not going to do that anymore? On one level the answer is simple and obvious. You eat too much when you think you HAVE to use food to reduce your stress level or get away from some uncomfortable feeling or thought because you BELIEVE that you don’t have any other way of doing that. Then food becomes a tranquilizer; an instant, always available, medication that shuts down your mind. At those moments emotional eating is a BLESSING.
But when those moments pass, and you realize you have a bad habit of using food as a tranquilizer TOO often, and you understand that this is the single most sabotaging factor in your weight control struggle that makes you break your diet every time, then you know that emotional eating is a CURSE, and you spend a lot of mental energy beating yourself up.
And if this habit of emotional eating is too embedded in your life, it is even more of a CURSE because on some level you understand that this habit so overloads your mind with obsessive thoughts about food and weight, that you can hardly think of anything else. It is a very bad eating habit that distracts you from vigorously pursuing your own personal development and the betterment of your relationships because it uses up too much mental oxygen. It is the addictive habit that causes binge eating and bulimia.
Control Your Binges
If you have struggled with your weight and quit as many diets as you started you are very familiar with what I have just described. Your problem is that you have not yet decided whether emotional eating is a BLESSING or a CURSE. On one hand you desperately want to control your eating; and on the other hand you want to be able to binge when the craving becomes so strong that you feel helpless and think to yourself, "what else could I do?"
You have a divided self because it is BOTH a blessing and a curse for you. You will be at peace with yourself about food and weight only after you have resolved the divided self conflict within you. If you don't resolve this conflict you won't be in charge of yourself and no matter how successful you are at losing weight by any diet, you'll always be worried about regaining it.
Large scale research on dieters tells us that you are in one of three equally large groups.
1.You only want a quick fix, fast-loss diet which means you would rather go through another cycle of weight loss and regaining than deal with this divided self conflict.
2. You have given up on all diets or weight loss approaches which means you have decided that emotional eating is too much of blessing to ever think of giving it up.
3. You recognize you need to make real lifestyle changes in regard to food which means you recognize emotional eating is more a curse than a blessing and you are looking for ways to resolve this divided self conflict.
I know this conflict very well. As a psychiatrist I have studied this with my own patients, written a book, and then created a program that has been used successfully by over 14,000 people. For those in the third group who are looking for lifestyle change, emotional eating can be controlled if one takes a careful step-by-step approach, at each step learning a critical piece of insight, and eventually replacing the initial helplessness thought "what else could I do" with the in-charge person who says “look at all the other ways I can handle this stress.” Then a new sense of personal power naturally emerges, and the cravings that were so strong in the past, actually disappear.
The discovery I have made is not that there is such a thing as emotional eating. We all know that. The discovery is that there is actually a way to replace the “blessing” of food with much better ways of handling life’s challenges. When you learn that well enough to act on it, your conflict is resolved, and the “curse” is gone; the "occupied" part of your mind is liberated.
In the next series of blog posts, I will tell you how that is happening right now with some of my patients and the members of my Shrink Yourself program.
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 1:49:41 PM | 31 COMMENTS
MONDAY, MARCH 31, 2008
The Pain-Body and The Feeling Phobia (A Series on The New Earth by Eckart Tolle)
Many members of Shrink Yourself have shared that they’re reading The New Earth (who isn’t?). They were amazed to discover how much the ideas of The New Earth correspond to what they’ve read in Shrink Yourself or learned in our program. I thought I would write a series of blog posts on how the two relate to one another. If you comment on this post, I’ll address things directly in future blog posts.
I thought I’d start with a discussion of the Pain-Body and how it relates to Emotional Eating since many of you are doing the online course on the New Earth and that is the subject for tonight’s program.
Eckart Tolle defines the Pain-Body as “an addiction to unhappiness.” It’s the part of us that contains all of our past hurts not just from our own experiences but from the lives of our ancestors, our gender, and even our culture. In Shrink Yourself, we call the fear of feeling anything uncomfortable, The Feeling Phobia. This fear sends people looking for the comfort of food.
When you begin to realize how much you carry around in your Pain-Body you can begin to understand why you have a Feeling Phobia. You’re not just afraid of what’s happened to you in your life, you’re afraid of carrying the sadness, rage and frustration of an eternity. If you’ve proved to yourself that eating keeps that pain at bay you can see how a dependence on food develops. You eat because you’ve proved to yourself that it works as a soothing balm. However, it’s a balm that comes at a price. It’s the price of your health and your ability to face life head on.
When you begin to realize that you have a Pain-Body but that you aren’t your Pain-Body your need to run from negative feelings into the comfort of food will lessen. You’ll start to see when a tidal wave of negative emotion is sweeping over you. This awareness is what we teach you how to develop in the Shrink Yourself program so that you no longer run from that wave of emotion into a pint of ice-cream but instead observe it, disconnect from it and recover your power so you can create a fulfilling life (instead of a full stomach).
Stay Tuned: The next blog on The New Earth will be about The Voice in Your Head that Tells You to Eat.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 4:43:54 PM | 17 COMMENTS
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 19, 2008
The Moral of the Story is Care
Maurice Sendak’s book Pierre tells the story of a little boy who says, “I don’t care “ to everything. When a lion shows up threatening to eat Pierre and Pierre retorts his usual, “I don’t care.” The lion eats him. The moral of the story is, care.
So often I hear people who struggle with their weight say, I saw the piece of cake and a voice inside me said, “I don’t care, I’ll just eat it.” Or [they’ll tell me,] I sat there with the whole box of Samoa Girl Scout Cookies and heard myself say, “ I don’t care, I’ll eat the whole box. After all Girl Scout Cookie season doesn’t come around again till next year.” Or getting ready for the gym and that same voice will say, “I don’t care if I never wear a bathing suit again, I’ll just sit here and watch Oprah.”
I’m here to tell you not to believe that voice. The truth is that you do care. You care very much. That’s why you’ve tried diet after diet and that’s why you looked for and found our website, book or online program.
Human beings feign disinterest when something feels too hard. If you have a child you’ve probably heard them say, “I don’t care if I never ride bike.” “I don’t care if those kids invite me to their party.” They care very much but they’re afraid of failing, and so are you.
It’s not that you don’t care, it’s that you feel defeated. And why shouldn’t you, diets set you up to fail because they don’t offer you the information you need to lose the weight you want. You don’t need an eating plan. You don’t need someone to tell you that a box full of caramel coated cookies isn’t good for you. You know all that.
What you need is to find your hope again by seeing real change. The kind of change you’re looking for in your body begins in your mind. It begins with a conviction to care. Care for your health. Care for your self-esteem. Care for your future. When you care you can stay true to yourself in the moment and make better choices.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 7:39:11 PM | 13 COMMENTS
MONDAY, MARCH 03, 2008
Being an Adult is the Best Kept Secret
Many of the roots of Emotional Eating lie in a fear to face our feelings, to take responsibility for our bodies, and to delay gratification. These are all examples of The Rebellious Self (which we discuss in Week 11 of the online program or The Rebellious Layer chapter in the book).
When we feel stuck in life it's often a symptom of the Rebellious Self. The Rebellious Self is the part of our minds that is selfish, spiteful, willful or defiant. In other words, childlike. For anyone who has a child, they understand that what seems like anger is often fear.
The way you take the hand of that frightened child inside of yourself and help him/her grow up is by acting "as if" you're an adult. Do the things that adults do and you'll become one.
They say that growing up is hard to do which is why most of us are willing to avoid it any cost. But when we begin to help ourselves grow up our lives improve. And as adults, we can make responsible choices about what we eat.
Being an adult gives us the chance to have a say about how our lives go and how our bodies look.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 2:35:03 PM | 23 COMMENTS
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 2008
Oscar Snacks
People who are trying to make good food choices keep asking, "What can I snack on while I watch the oscars?"
Here are some suggestions:
Baby carrots with salsa.
Dried apple rings.
Celery filled with low-fat laughing cow cheese.
Grilled chicken skewers.
Almonds.
Apples and Brie wrapped in smoked turkey.
A box of clementines (they're in season now).
Popsicles.
Air-popped popcorn.
Just to name a few.
Feel free to add to this list by clicking on comments below.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 9:08:56 PM | 9 COMMENTS
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 2008
The Devil You Know
On Saturday in The Los Angeles Times there was an article about the law that New York is proposing that fast food restaurants post the calorie contents of foods next to them on the menu. If you knew the triple cheeseburger with extra bacon you were about to eat had 1,200 calories would it deter you from eating it? Or would it make you just feel more guilty for eating it?
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 11:17:37 AM | 22 COMMENTS
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 08, 2008
Prepare for Valentine's Day
Let the Love Begin Today
“When I lose the weight I’ll….” fill in the blank. Dress more fashionably, have better sex, flirt, enjoy my own company. We know you have a running list of your own.
Valentine’s Day can be a day to dread. If you have a partner, it can be a day of high expectations followed by big disappointments. If you’re single the day can exaggerate your loneliness and inflate your longing. If you still haven’t lost the weight you want to lose, these feelings can be even worse. And what do all those feelings (coupled with easy access to chocolate) do? They lead you to overeat. So, what’s the answer?
You can let the love begin today. This Valentine’s Day, be your own valentine (whether or not you have a lover in your life). Everyone hates being told to love themselves first and yet there’s some truth to that old cliché. When you remember that you’re a unique person then every breath of a cardiovascular workout is a way to nurture your precious heart, a heart that keeps the irreplaceable you alive. Eating healthy food changes from an act of deprivation to an act of adoration—for yourself. These choices become the everyday ways you express love for yourself.
If you can predict the problems of Valentine’s Day (or any other feared day), you can prevent them.
If you’re partnered:
• Be explicit with your beloved about what you want. Set them up to win and then be thankful (we think it won’t feel as good if we have to ask for what we want but you’d be surprised).
• If the day is generally celebrated with decadent food and desserts make plans to do something else instead (a shared bath or a moonlit walk).
• If you’ve been withholding sex because your weight makes you feel unattractive, conjure up a moment in your mind when you felt good about yourself, and use that memory to ignite a seduction. Remember that voluptuous women from Marilyn Monroe to Camryn Manheim to Queen Latifah simply know how to use their size and sexuality to their advantage.
If you’re single:
• Give yourself the gift of a sensual pleasure (a massage, a pedicure, a restorative yoga class).
• Plan something fun with another single friend (for years I went to a fancy restaurant with my best friend followed by a rented movie – in those years I never felt sad to be without a date).
• Make Valentine’s cards (for your single friends and one for yourself, too).
In short, don’t wait for that someday when you lose the weight to start loving yourself or letting people love you. Start today. When you are full of love, you don’t look for food nearly as much. This Valentine’s Day we give you permission to binge but let it be a binge on love.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 2:03:41 PM | 5 COMMENTS
TUESDAY, JANUARY 08, 2008
How To Look Good Naked
Most of you know that I don't have television.
Luckily, some things find you. Yesterday, I watched a screener of How to Look Good Naked http://www.mylifetime.com/on-tv/shows/how-look-good-naked, Lifetime's new reality show. It is a terrific show for people attempting to lose weight to watch.
I have always said that, "you don't get happy when you lose the weight, you find your happiness and then you're able to take loving actions towards yourself like eating right and exercising." This show will help you do that. It's remarkable.
I was moved to tears by how much we women shame ourselves for not looking like the pictures we see in magazines (by the way, I worked at an advertising agency where I literally watched our art directors thin arms and thighs and remove cellulite from photos of celebrities we spend our time wishing we looked like) and in doing so, we fail to see how lovely we already are.
It's fine to want to lose weight (it is undeniably healthier to exercise and eat well) but please, do it as an act of love for the wonderful, beautiful person you already are as opposed to doing it so you can be accepted by a perfection-obsessed society.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 10:40:54 AM | 5 COMMENTS
FRIDAY, JANUARY 04, 2008
Happy New Year!
Everyone has the New Year's Resolution to take better care of themselves.
This year be slow and steady about it rather than looking for a quick fix.
Even Weight Watchers is suggesting to go on a Diet Diet - take a break from dieting and make a permanent change in your lives.
One way to help yourself is to consider the people around you. This study published in the New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/26/health/26fat.html?
_r=3&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=1
&adxnnlx=1199469967-pDi8Cm3BIWmWafUf4oMtTA
suggests that people gain weight in groups and lose weight in groups. Your friends bodies actually determine what yours looks like.
This doesn't mean you should cut off your overweight friends but it might help if you make a pact with the people around you to help each other keep your promises in the New Year. Go on walks together instead
of meeting for lunch, cook healthy food for one another, etc.
Support is an essential component to making changes.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 11:28:36 AM | 3 COMMENTS
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 20, 2007
Chair Yoga: Soothe Yourself Right in Your Seat
One less reason to make an excuse about exercise.
Here is a great FREE online instructional about how to do yoga in a chair.
You can reap all the benefits of yoga even if you have mobility issues.
Take a look: http://hillarysyogapractice.wordpress.com
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 7:09:38 AM | 2 COMMENTS
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 14, 2007
It's Not Just What You Eat That Makes You Fat: It's What You Drink
For some emotional eaters the thing that they reach for when they
need relief or reward is not food, but drinks (especially for people
that have had Lap Band Surgery). Maybe you reach for a caramel latte
or a coke.
Read this article and reconsider the cost of what you drink.
Click here to read the article.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 7:15:25 AM | 1 COMMENTS
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 09, 2007
Meditation for Weight Loss
Meditation is extremely helpful for Emotional Eaters because emotional eating is used as a way to dial down intense feelings. Meditation teaches you how to turn the volume down on uncomfortable feelings. Once you get good at it, you won't need food nearly as much.
Meditation can seem overwhelming to some people and very serious but it doesn't have to be.
If anxiety is what makes you overeat:
Try a simple form of meditation like yogic breathing, chanting, or simply following your breath.
If depression is what makes you overeat:
Try something joyful that incorporates movement like walking in nature, watching funny movies, or dancing.
If you're overwhelmed by too many thoughts and that makes you overeat:
Try a needle craft like knitting, journal writing, something that gets you into your body (sports, dance, tai chi, yoga)
If the lack of sex in your life makes you overeat:
Try something that provides euphoric escape like drumming, chanting, or dancing.
If boredom makes you overeat:
Try scrapbooking, collage, coloring in a coloring book (any of these can be done to music)
If anger makes you overeat:
Try deep-breathing or journaling.
If negative self-talk and self-doubts make you overeat:
Try a mantra practice with positive self-talk messages.
If you want anymore information on any of these types of meditation leave a comment here, google it , or start a thread on our message boards. Committing to a meditation practice will make a huge difference in your efforts to lose weight and live a more fulfilling life.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 11:29:08 PM | 19 COMMENTS
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 04, 2007
How Stress Makes You Flabby
Studies are starting to prove what we at Shrink Yourself have been
trying to tell you all along: Stress Makes You Flabby.
In a recent study rats who were under stress but ate the same diet as
other rates, gained weight. Simply put, when you're stressed out
there are hormones produced in the body that make you hold onto extra
weight, especially in the abdomen. To read the full article that
appeared in Sunday's Parade Magazine, click here.
So, the obvious question is how can you reduce your stress. Here are
a few ways:
1. Don't Bury Feelings
2. Get Support
3. Learn to Say, "No" Instead of Over Extending Yourself (By the way,
"No." is a complete sentence - you don't need to explain)
4. Meditate (for more information about meditating - come back later
this week to read about the best meditation for weight loss)
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 7:08:06 AM | 4 COMMENTS
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 2007
5 Reasons Your Partner Makes You Fat
Human Beings turn to food to fill them up when they’re empty. This happens when they’re biologically hungry but it also happens when they’re emotionally hungry. Emotional Eating is the number one reason that diets fail. One area where many people fall short in their level of satisfaction is in their romantic lives.
Read below to determine if your relationship issues could be affecting your weight.
1. They don't provide sweetness, so you look for it somewhere else.
Not to be so literal about things but human beings crave sweetness in life. When asking for affection, lovers say to each other, “give me some sugar.” In a recent study, Rats preferred sugar to cocaine. The sweetness that you long for is love, tenderness, sex, and affection. Oftentimes, when partners fall short of proving those things, people look to sweets instead. If you’re missing the “sugar” in your relationship some of your weight gain could be related.
2. There's something you want to say but you stuff it in with food.
Expressing how you feel in a way that is effective is challenging even for the most mature and evolved people. Many people keep their feelings bottled up. A recent study published in The New York Times revealed how detrimental it is to women’s health to keep their emotions inside. Food can be the perfect aid to keeping words inside. People have even said that they “shove food in to keep angry words from coming out.” If you’re afraid to express yourself you could be keeping your unspoken words down with food.
3. You eat to keep them company.
Many people work different schedules. A woman might eat with her children at 5:00 PM and then eat again with her partner when they get home from work a few hours later. Maybe you don’t want to feel left out or you don’t want your partner to eat alone. There are other ways to keep them company. You can have a tea or coffee. And remember, if you’re not busy chewing, you get to do most of the talking while they listen and eat.
4. They have a different metabolism than you - and you resent it.
Your partner may be able to eat whatever they want and not gain a pound, while you simply look at food and gain ten pounds. This is unfair but a reality of life. People have different metabolisms. Don’t use someone else’s biological make-up to make yourself feel cheated. Part of growing up is realizing that we all work in different ways and need different things to thrive.
5. You eat to get back at them.
When you see it on paper it might not make sense but many people eat things to punish their partners. They know that their partner wants them to lose weight and they’re not giving in. Eating is the way they assert their independence or punish a partner for bad behavior.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 11:06:56 AM | 11 COMMENTS
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2007
Sugar, More Addictive Than Cocaine.
In the Los Angeles Times on Saturday November 10th there was an article (Denise Gellene) about the addictive nature of sugar. One of the members of our community shared this article with me and I think it's so important so I'm going to share it with you.
-------------------------
Researchers have learned that rats overwhelmingly prefer water sweetened with saccharin to cocaine, a finding that demonstrates the addictive potential of sweets.
Offering larger doses of cocaine did not alter the rats' preference for saccharin, according to the report.
Scientists said the study, presented this week in San Diego at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, might help explain the rise in human obesity, which has been driven in part by an over consumption of sugary foods.
In the experiment, 43 rats were placed in cages with two levers, one of which delivered an intravenous does of cocaine and the other a sip of highly sweetened water. At the end of the 15-day trial, 40 of the rat consistently chose saccharin instead of water.
When sugar water was substituted for the saccharin solution the results were the same, researchers said.
Further testing subjected 24 cocaine-addicted rats to a similar trial. At the end of 10 days, the majority of them preferred saccharin.
"Intense sweetness is more rewarding to the rats than cocaine," said coauthor Magalie Lenoir of the University of Bordeaux in France. 'Excess sugar could increase levels of the brain chemical dopamine, leading to a craving for sweets," she said.
Lenoir said mammalian taste receptors evolved in an environment that lacked sugar and so were not adapted to the high concentrations of sweets found in the modern diet. Excess sugar could increase levels of dopamine, she said, leading to a craving for sweet.
Cocaine also increases dopamine, she said, but through a different brain mechanism.
Sweets beg you to eat more sweets. By eliminating sugar (and sugar substitutes) you can lose a great deal of weight. The cravings will be bad at first but I can attest to the fact that after about two weeks they go away completely.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 8:32:55 PM | 9 COMMENTS
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 04, 2007
Lessons Learned on Halloween (for Next Year)
If you are like me, you've probably eaten a few more Halloween candies than you wanted to but less than you ate last year or the year before that.
Here are a few ideas to help you (from myself and other Shrink Yourself members) next year.
1. If you have trick or treaters that come to your home buy a type of candy that you know kids would like but that you're not tempted to eat. Rather than getting Reese's Peanut Butter Cups and Almond Joys get Spongebob Gummies and Extra Sour Candies.
2. At our house we implement something called the Switch Witch. My son gets about 10 lbs. (I kid you not) of candy from Trick or Treating. He can eat 10 pieces on Halloween night. He can save 10 pieces for after Halloween. Then the rest gets put out on the porch where "the switch witch" takes it and trades it for a toy, or dvd, or game. This saves us every day negotiations about how much candy can be eaten and saves me late night rummaging in his candy bag. As for the candy, it gets given away to someone who is not tempted by the idea of having pounds of candy in their home.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 11:40:06 PM | 1 COMMENTS
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 01, 2007
Diet and Cancer Report
The world cancer research fund has issued a report on the links between diet and cancer. Their vision is to help people make choices that reduce their chances of developing cancer. The findings of their study were quite significant. While smoking cessation is the biggest preventer of cancer (30%). It is followed up by weight loss. If you lose weight, even as little as ten pounds, you begin to reduce your risk of getting cancer by 20%.
Leaving behind all of the cosmetic reasons to lose weight, this study proves how important weight loss is to cancer prevention.
Losing weight not only makes you look and feel better but can prevent illness. If you're on our site, you already know that losing weight is not as simple as it sounds. Understanding and overcoming emotional eating is the missing link you've been looking for to lose weight for the rest or your life and for healthy living.
To read the full report: http://www.dietandcancerreport.org
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 1:20:51 PM | 1 COMMENTS
MONDAY, OCTOBER 22, 2007
Nighttime Eating
I posted this on our message boards in response to a question about nighttime eating. Since eating at night is so common I thought it bore repeating.
If you are a person who struggles with overeating at night - you'll need to ask yourself some questions.
What does the night represent for you?
Are you lonely?
Do you wish you were with a lover?
Are you dreading another day of work?
Are you overwhelmed by the mess you see around you?
Do you have a partner who makes you feel even more lonely because you
don't connect with them in the way that you want to be?
It's asking yourself these kinds of questions that will break the code on why you overeat at night.
If you haven't visiting our message boards yet, let me be the first to invite you. People that use message boards to get support have great success losing weight.
They're free and full of supportive people who are learning how to overcome nighttime eating and many other forms of overeating.
Click here to register for the message boards.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 7:26:46 AM | 14 COMMENTS
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 17, 2007
Women: Don't Keep Your Feelings Bottled Up
A recent study revealed that women who keep their feelings bottled up when arguing with a spouse are more likely to experience health problems (including death) than men who keep their feelings bottled up. Click here to read the article.
This is yet another indicator of how important it is to understand your feelings and learn how to speak them responsibly.
Emotional eaters use overeating as a tool to help them silence their feelings. People have even told us things like, "I stuff my mouth with food so angry words don't come out." There is a toll that keeping feelings in takes (beyond gaining weight). It affects your health in profound ways.
When you're tempted to overeat, ask yourself is there something that needs to be coming out of my mouth, instead of putting food in?
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 9:42:25 AM | 6 COMMENTS
MONDAY, OCTOBER 08, 2007
Quinoa (A Great Grain for Losing Weight)
I have written a lot about Quinoa on the message boards. For those of you who are not familiar with it - it's a great grain to lose weight.
Qinoa is an ancient grain that originated in Peru. It's gluten free and high in protein.
You cook it two to one - just like rice.
You can even cook it in your rice cooker.
It's very healthy, delicious and cooks up quickly.
Use it in a salad (like Tabbouleh), serve it instead of rice, stir in some olive oil and grated Pecorino for a great risotto alternative.
For people that are attempting to lose weight it's best to avoid gluten (and any simple carbohydrate). Replace rice, pasta, bread an potatoes with things made out of the following four grains (quinoa, millet, buckwheat and amaranth).
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 12:08:10 PM | 8 COMMENTS
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 2007
Oprah Interview
In an interview Oprah once said that when they say, "God only gives you what you can handle, they're not just talking about suffering, they're talking about the good stuff, too."
Are you ready to be a success? Do you think you're worth it? Are you ready to be thin? To reveal your whole self to the world without the safety that extra weight provides?
This may sound like an easy question but you'd be surprised how many people tell us just how terrified of success they are.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 8:59:42 PM | 8 COMMENTS
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2007
Fat: A Protective Coating
Fat can actually serve to protect us from things we don't know how to otherwise handle. On most days, my emotional eating habit is in check. I have learned to manage my feelings without using food for comfort. However, I, like most other emotional eaters, have certain themes, emotions or areas of my life, where it's difficult to cope without food. On a recent trip home to visit family, I immediately put on 7lbs. It almost seemed like I stepped into a new, heavier, dare I say safer, body. Despite the fact that I'm in my thirties, I still feel like a little girl when my parents fight. I built a little house around myself so I could bear with being in their house.
Fat can protect you from all kinds of things. It can protect you from a spouse you don't want to be too close to but don't have the courage to leave. It can protect you from admiring glances. It can protect you from taking risk. And conversely, when you find a way to provide yourself with real protection, the kind that only comes from knowing yourself, many people report a feeling that they describe as "stepping out of a fat suit."
Has fat been protecting you from anything? How could you learn to protect yourself?
I've decided that my next trip home will be shorter. In the meantime, the seven pounds have fallen off. I'm safe at home again.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 11:54:04 PM | 5 COMMENTS
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 06, 2007
Leslie Sansone - If You Live In A Dangerous Place - Walk in the Safety of Your Home
If you're taking a "no excuses" approach to weight loss, you can always find some way around your obstacles. Yes, it's true that if you live in an unsafe neighborhood you might not want to walk or run outside, but Leslie Sansone's DVDs give you no excuse. You can walk right in the comfort of your own home.
Remember, when there is a will, there is a way. And necessity is the mother of invention. Find a way to make exercise work for you. It doesn't have to look a certain way. it can be chopping wood, gardening, dancing.
Today, I jumped on a trampoline for twenty minutes with my seven-year old son. He can be quite challenging but suddenly there we were in a moment when I wasn't correcting him. We were just having fun, jumping, and laughing. And in the end he was chanting, "I love my Mama." I got to play with my son (something that is difficult for me to do sometimes) and I didn't even realize I was exercising at the same time.
What way can you make exercising fun today?
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 2:58:19 PM | 2 COMMENTS
TUESDAY, AUGUST 28, 2007
A National Plan That Misses The Point
In an article on CNN today which called for a national plan to address obesity they cited two simple ways for people to lose weight:
"closing their mouth, going for a walk. It's the world's easiest diet plan." If it was so easy, why are millions of Americans having such a hard time. Doesn't anyone see that eat less and exercise more doesn't work for one very simple reason; it's not what you eat, it's why you eat.
Why are Americans suffering?
Why are we stuffing down our sorrows with food?
Why can't we help ourselves, and each other, feel better without eating ourselves into obesity?
If you want to read the whole article, click here.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 6:11:43 AM | 6 COMMENTS
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 22, 2007
What Will I Think About If I'm Not Obsessed with Food?
If you struggle with your weight, you know that the time spent thinking about food can be extensive. You think about what you're going to eat or how you wish you hadn't eaten. You think about how awful you feel about getting dressed. You wonder what people think about you. All this thinking take up a lot of time. It's time you could be thinking about other things. And that's just the thing that scares a lot of people. A lot of people tell us that they're afraid to free up their thinking time. This fear can actually keep you from losing weight. It's so powerful it can have you sabotage yourself.
Avoiding real problems makes them seem bigger than they are. It also makes you depend on the distraction of food a lot more.
Begin to teach yourself to think about things that feed you emotionally - art, nature, great movies, books, interactions with friends and family. Then, when you're not thinking about food, your mind will be accustomed to thinking about things that enliven you.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 8:42:30 AM | POST A COMMENT
MONDAY, AUGUST 13, 2007
Shrink Yourself in Psychology Today (August Issue)
To read an article by Matthew Hutson about Shrink Yourself in the August issue of Psychology Today cut and paste the following link:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/pto-20070723-000002.html
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 9:05:50 PM | 1 COMMENTS
FRIDAY, AUGUST 03, 2007
The Sum of What Our Program Does
One of our online members gave me permission to post this message she put up on our boards.
I love this on line program and the book. I have really begun to listen to myself and deal with issues. My husband works night shift sometimes and was off last night. He loves baseball (okay TV) and I felt ignored. Get this! Instead of running to the fridge I recognized what was going on, acknowledged my feelings and didn't say something dumb like "all you do is watch TV". I said something smart, I miss you! Which was really what I was feeling. Wow, he was ready to turn the TV off. That worked so much better than eating everything in the house and then hating myself afterwards, not to mention the problem would have still been there and the feelings unresolved.
The thing that this program helps you do is to realize that getting full on food, never gets you fulfilled by life.
This program teaches you that overeating not only gives you a body you're unhappy with, but it interrupts your best thinking. By choosing a quick fix instead of something that gets to the root of a problem, your life doesn't move forward.
As you can see from the member's post above she got clear about what she was feeling (she missed her husband). She didn't eat to manage feeling ignored. She didn't nag or criticize him. She simply expressed her true feeling. That's something that her husband was able to respond to.
This program is not just about recovering your power over food, it's about having a life you love.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 5:59:26 AM | 4 COMMENTS
TUESDAY, JULY 24, 2007
Losing Weight Karate Kid Style
Do you remember in the Karate Kid when Mr. Miyagi asked Daniel to paint the fence, and wax on and wax off? After a week of doing Mr. Miyagi's chores Daniel was pretty frustrated. Mr. Miyagi quickly quelled his frustrations by proving that while he was performing these chores he was learning the fundamentals of karate.
People often ask me how I've lost my weight and kept it off. It was more of a change of lifestyle. I learned to put my clothes away at the end of the night, I learned to clean up while I cook instead of after, I learned to pay my bills on time, you get the idea. The better I got at managing the simple details of my life, the better I got at eating right. I made this connection yesterday to Dr. Gould in a meeting we were having. And then, in an act of serendipity this article appeared on CNN yesterday (http://www.cnn.com/2007/LIVING/personal/06/29/in.your.head/index.html) that detailed that people who achieved long term weight loss had a complete shift in lifestyle which included being more organized and detail oriented. Making those kinds of shifts actually alters your brain in a way that allows you to be more disciplined about eating right.
I would like you to take on the challenge of learning to lose weight in alternative ways. Try any one of the following things:
1. Organize all those loose photos you have in albums.
2. Keep your house clean.
3. Clear out the closets and the garage of things you don't use anymore.
4. Pay your bills on time.
5. Clean away any clutter.
Doing these things and doing them consistently will make it easier to lose weight. Give it a try.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 10:25:54 AM | 11 COMMENTS
FRIDAY, JULY 20, 2007
By 2015 75% of Americans will be Overweight
According to researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health's Center for Human Nutrition by the year 2015 75% of Americans will be overweight and 41% will be obese.
This statistic doesn't have to become the inevitable future of our country. We can change but the answers aren't in the food pyramid they're inside of us.
What are we really hungry for?
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 1:09:51 PM | 3 COMMENTS
MONDAY, JULY 16, 2007
Resistance to the Idea of Emotional Eating
Our work with thousands of people has shown us that emotional eating is the number one reason that people break their diets. Here are some of the reasons that we've seen people have to explore before they could understand the idea of emotional eating and stop letting it sabotage their dieting success.
*I just have to finish the food on my plate
*I don't want to waste food
*I don't care anymore
*Nothings going to change so why bother trying
*I have a metabolism problem
*Everyone in my family is fat
*I'd upset a loved one if I didn't eat
If you hear yourself saying anyone of these things, use some of our free tools and get to the bottom of why you've been overeating. For me, the thing that I always said was "I just don't care anymore." That became my justification for eating whatever I wanted. The truth was that I cared deeply but I was just too afraid of failing one more time.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 6:54:31 PM | 3 COMMENTS
TUESDAY, JULY 10, 2007
Fat: A Perfect Hiding Place
In the later weeks of our online program and in The Shrink Yourself book Dr. Gould covers the subconscious reasons that people secretly want to stay fat. Of course, you don't feel like you want to stay overweight (I didn't think I did either) but somewhere inside you the safety seeking part of you does. This makes losing weight tricky. It makes people put weight back on when they get close to reaching their goal weight. It makes people that have lost all the weight they want put it back on plus more. Losing weight can feel like taking away a security blanket but as one of our members once said, "once you begin to live a life you love, fat just feels like a useless blanket you're hiding beneath."
Here are a few reasons people keep weight on - see if any resonate with you:
*to avoid sexual attention (from a partner or strangers who seem predatory)
*to punish someone
*so that people's expectations of you are not too high
*to see if people really love you for who you are (to test love)
These are just a few, you can read more in the Safety, Rebellion and Emptiness chapters of the Shrink Yourself book.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 10:57:48 PM | 10 COMMENTS
THURSDAY, JULY 05, 2007
Stress + Junk Food = Obesity ** Break The Toxic Equation
Way to Shrink, Grow Fat Is Found
By Rob Stein
Scientists reported yesterday that they have uncovered a biological switch by which stress can promote obesity, a discovery that could help explain the world's growing weight problem and lead to new ways to melt flab and manipulate fat for cosmetic purposes.
In the article (see link above) published last week in The Washington Post it revealed that a new study at Georgetown University has nailed down the biochemistry of how obesity happens in mice, with the good likelihood that this is precisely what happens in humans. The key culprit is stress. Stress plus a junk food diet (high-fat, high-sugar) creates obesity, not simply a junk food diet alone. Mice that were subjected to stress and fed a junk food diet gained twice as much fat as mice that were fed the same diet but not subjected to stress. It was the worst kind of fat that was gained. Abdominal fat laced with hormones that leads to various illnesses (high blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol).
The authors of this study were optimistic because the findings suggested an injection of something that blocks neuropeptide Y, a chemical messenger produced by nerves in the body that stimulates fat growth, would inhibit weight gain. Yes, that might work and we can wait for them to develop such an injection. However, the authors of the article didn’t even consider a far simpler solution. There are two options. The first is to abstain from junk food. However, as you might already know, this can be difficult because of the calming effects of eating certain foods. The second is to teach people how to manage their stress and their fat cells will not be stimulated to grow. But how?
Stress is ubiquitous. We can’t propose eliminating stress but you can break the addictive pattern of using junk food to manage stress. This is what Shrink Yourself has been teaching people to do. Once that connection is broken, you can learn more efficient ways to manage the inevitable stress of everyday life.
When food is removed as a stress management coping mechanism, you can make sensible food choices and lose weight. That’s how you break the addiction to junk food. Our programs interrupt both factors in the toxic combination of stress and fatty foods and the obesity they create.
To Read the complete article in The Washington Post click here:
Way to Shrink, Grow Fat is Found
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 3:35:21 PM | 4 COMMENTS
THURSDAY, JUNE 28, 2007
Look Out For Articles By Dr. Gould
You can read articles by Dr. Roger Gould in the July, 2007 issue of Good Housekeeping and the August, 2007 issue of Psychology Today.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 11:11:24 PM | 1 COMMENTS
MONDAY, JUNE 25, 2007
Is It Too Late to Lose the Weight?
I get asked this question by people that have struggled with their weight all the time. People worry that their overeating pattern is so engrained that it can never be changed. People worry that if they do lose the weight that their skin will hang and the world will know that they were once fat. People worry that they just won’t be able to bear another failure.
It is NEVER too late.
The part of a movie or television show that is always the most moving is when someone the main character believed to be unsupportive finally comes around. The wife in Evan Almighty. The father in Billy Elliot. Dr. Bailey on Grey’s Anatomy.
In the best stories, in the eleventh hour someone shows up and no matter how many times they failed before, we cheer. It’s just that the person you’re waiting to show up for you, is you.
It’s NEVER too late to show up for yourself. You can lose the weight.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 11:11:36 PM | 7 COMMENTS
TUESDAY, JUNE 19, 2007
Depression & Anxiety Affect The Outcome of Obesity Surgeries
In an article in The Santa Monica Daily Press published on June 17, 2006 it detailed how a federally funded research study determined that obese people suffering from depression and anxiety lose less weight after obesity surgery.
It outlined the importance of treating emotional issues before expecting weight loss success.
Whether you are attempting to lose weight through the most common regime (diet and exercise) or the most extreme (surgery) this article is a reminder of the fact that it's a prerequisite to dieting sucess to exercise your mind before your body.
I have said this before but it's worth repeating. When you feel good about yourself, that's when you're ready to set yourself up to succeed on any healthy eating plan you choose.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 12:31:13 PM | 3 COMMENTS
MONDAY, JUNE 11, 2007
Are You An Emotional Eater? (An Excerpt from Shrink Yourself)
To find out if you’re an emotional eater, answer the following seven questions:
The last time you ate too much:
1. Did you notice your hunger coming on fast, or did it grow gradually?
2. When you got hungry, did you feel an almost desperate need to eat something right away?
3. When you ate, did you pay attention to what went in your mouth, or did you just stuff it in?
4. When you got hungry, would any nutritious food have sufficed, or did you need a certain type of food or treat to satisfy yourself?
5. Did you feel guilty after you ate?
6. Did you eat when you were emotionally upset or experiencing feelings of “emptiness”?
7. Did you stuff in the food very quickly?
Let’s see how you did.
1. Emotional hunger comes on suddenly while physical hunger develops slowly. Physical hunger begins with a tummy rumble, then it becomes a stronger grumble, and finally it evolves into hunger pangs, but it’s a slow process, very different from emotional hunger, which has a sudden, dramatic onset.
2. Unlike physical hunger, emotional hunger demands food immediately, and it wants immediate satisfaction. Physical hunger, on the other hand, will wait for food.
3. A difference between physical and emotional hunger involves mindfulness. To satisfy physical hunger, you normally make a deliberate choice about what you consume, and you maintain awareness of what you eat. You notice how much you put in your mouth so that you can stop when you’re full. Emotional hunger, in contrast, rarely notices what’s being eaten. If you have emotional hunger, you’ll want more food even after you’re stuffed.
4. Emotional hunger often demands particular foods in order to be fulfilled. If you’re physically hungry, even carrots will look delicious. If you’re emotionally hungry, however, only cake or ice cream or your particular preferred indulgence will seem appealing.
5. Emotional hunger often results in guilt or promises to do better next time. Physical hunger has no guilt attached to it, because you know you ate in order to maintain health and energy.
6. Emotional hunger results from some emotional trigger. Physical hunger results from a physiological need.
7. When you are feeding physical hunger, you can eat your food and savor each bite, but when you eat to fulfill emotional hunger you stuff the food in. All of a sudden you look down and the whole pint of ice cream is gone.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 9:44:57 PM | 10 COMMENTS
FRIDAY, JUNE 08, 2007
Dr. Gould on the Huffington Post
Click the link to read an article by Dr. Gould on the Huffington Post:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/roger-gould/what-makes-people-fat-_b_51179.html
You'll notice from the comments that people are pretty resistant to the idea that feelings play such a huge role in losing weight. I think we need to make it safe for people to understand how painful the idea of giving up the comfort of food can be. Once we don't have to feel ashamed about this, there will be room for real change.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 10:54:30 AM | 4 COMMENTS
THURSDAY, MAY 31, 2007
Five Tips to End Emotional Eating
Emotional Eating is the number one reason that diets fail but the good news is that it's a learned behavior that can be stopped.
1. Become aware of the moments when you overeat.
Notice the difference between the times when you eat in a controlled way and the times when you overindulge. Is it when you're alone or in groups? At night or in the afternoon? When you're angry, tired, stressed or bored?
2. Pause.
Take a time-out when you're tempted to overeat and ask yourself the following questions: What am I really hungry for? Is food going to help me get what I really want? What else could I do besides eating?
3. Develop an inventory of other sources of comfort.
You eat to feel better because it works. You do feel better for a few moments after you eat, that is until the guilt settles in. Your mind offers it as an option because you haven't learned better, more effective forms of comfort. When you learn new ways, you won't need food.
4. Put the pieces of your life in order.
The more you know how to manage the details of your life (your past, your self-doubts, your finances, your relationships, your household, your family) the less you'll need the comfort of food.
5. Be happy now.
People are under the false pretense that when they lose weight they'll be happy but it actually happens in reverse. When you are content with who you are and how your life is going you're in a place to make mindful food choices and finally lose the weight you want to lose.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 10:39:32 AM | 12 COMMENTS
TUESDAY, MAY 22, 2007
Top 5 Things That Make You Fat - True or False
1. Carbs make you fat
False: Carbohydrates are actually a necessary part of a balanced diet. However, carbs have become the new scape goat. The French are thin and you don’t see them giving up their baguettes.
2. Thyroid problems make you fat
False: While thyroid problems do contribute to a lower metabolism there are many people who have hypothyroidism and maintain a healthy weight.
3. Fat makes you fat
False: Fat is actually your friend. Just like carbs it’s important to have good fats in your diet—fats that provide Omega 3 and 6 like flax meal, salmon, olive oil and avocadoes.
4. Genes make you fat
False: While genes can give you a propensity to be overweight they don’t make it an absolute inevitability that you’ll be fat.
5. Feelings make you fat
True: There are over a dozen studies that were conducted over the past fifty years all over the world that say negative emotions are the number one factor in weight gain.
Some of these answers might make you feel defensive. Genes and hormones are really tricky. I know because all of the women in my family are overweight or obese and many of us (indcluding myself) have hypothryroidism. Those two factors have made it more difficult for me to lose weight and maintain an optimal weight but not impossible. The thing with genes and hormones is that they can make you feel powerless. If your genes or your thyroid dictate that you're more likely to be overweight you might feel defeated. The whole thing is just too hard, so why bother. Right? I know I used to feel that way. If you fall into one of those categories, please don't make the mistake of believing that you have no other choice. It's just not true.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 11:07:21 AM | 8 COMMENTS
FRIDAY, MAY 18, 2007
Weekends Can Be Rough for Emotional Eaters
Weekends can trigger emotional eating for two reasons.
1. If you're a social person you may find yourself in situations where there is a lot of eating and don't know how to control your urges.
2. If you wish you had social engagements and don't, the weekend can be a time of loneliness and isolation.
No matter which category you find yourself in, it all goes back to remembering to pause before you eat and ask yourself if you're really hungry. If you're not hungry, what are you hungry for, and how can you take a step towards getting it?
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 2:10:06 PM | 3 COMMENTS
FRIDAY, MAY 18, 2007
What Excuses Do You Make?
There are a thousand excuses to hold onto your emotional eating patterns. The first step to breaking them is to admit you're making them. Below are some of the most common excuses people make to keep overeating.
- Eating right now will not really impact my weight loss efforts.
- I won't feel any better if I lose weight so there's no point to controlling what I eat.
- Even if I lose weight I still won't avoid health problems so it's a waste of energy.
- It's not worth 'depriving' myself like this today -- trying later will work better.
- I can't really control my urges in the long run so I might as well give up now.
- There's no point in trying to lose weight, since I give up on all my diets anyway.
- I don't feel ready to make a big dieting effort.
- In this moment, I just don't care anymore.
What excuses do you make? Identifying the excuses you make to justify overeating is an essential step towards successful weight loss. Awareness is essential when it comes to excuses. Only through insight and awareness can you stop them from being a problem.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 6:49:34 AM | 11 COMMENTS
THURSDAY, MAY 17, 2007
The Ten Habits of Every Successful Dieter
There are 10 habits that every successful dieter must practice. How many are you struggling to master?
1. Listening to Your Body
Listening to your body means that you carefully observe yourself when you are eating to determine when you are physically satisfied. If you practice listening to your body, you can greatly decrease the amount of food you eat. Many people overeat because they feel like they have to clean their plate or because they want to feel stuffed. But these people aren't listening to the signals from their body telling them that they are physically full.
2. Hunger Management
Many people overeat because they don't properly manage their hunger. Some let themselves get too hungry and their hunger forces them to eat too much when they finally see food again. Or, they eat unhealthy food to quickly satisfy their hunger. The best way to manage your hunger is to strategically plan meals ahead of time so you don't get too hungry. The other trick is to carry around healthy snacks so your hunger never gets out of control.
3. Bouncing Back
Let's face it - indulgence is inevitable. If you don't indulge yourself, at least occasionally, you'll eventually feel deprived. And the fact is, you can't feel deprived your whole life. Besides there's no reason to feel deprived. You can lose weight without depriving yourself! You just have to be flexible. If you eat too much one day, you have to compensate for it later by eating less or exercising more. Being flexible and bouncing back is the name of the game. Don't let one little indulgence prevent you from managing your weight for a lifetime.
4. Keeping My Weight In Mind
Keeping your weight in your mind when you're choosing what to eat and what to avoid is a big part of winning the weight loss battle. If your weight loss goal slips out of your mind at the sight of your favorite foods, you'll find yourself sabotaging your own weight loss efforts. It's important to stay focused. You need to understand that weight loss happens in the present. If you tell yourself, "This time it's ok," and go overboard on your favorite food, what will prevent you from telling yourself the same thing the next time, and the time after that? Keep your mind on your goal, but always remember that what you do right now will determine how quickly you reach your goal, or whether you reach it at all.
5. Avoiding Junk Food
I don't have to explain why this is one of the 10 Habits because eating too much junk food is a surefire way of keeping your ideal weight out of reach-that's why it's called junk food. But junk food has a powerful hold over some people that can be hard to break and that's why it deserves special attention.
6. Exercising Enough
Exercise is absolutely essential to weight loss. It doesn't matter how few calories or carbs you eat, if you don't use up that energy throughout the week. Getting out there and getting your heart rate up at least a few times a week is key.
7. Using Portion Control
Consciously controlling how much you eat is important. It means you are in charge of what you eat, rather than food being in charge of you. If you know something's fattening, eat a smaller portion. Eat half of something instead of the whole portion. Cutting back on the portion means cutting back on the pounds. Eating smaller portions will also make listening to your body much easier.
Binge Prevention
People complain of their inability to control binging almost more than any other essential weight loss habit. No matter what they do, people just can't seem to stop the urge to binge. Whether they binge when they're frustrated, unhappy, or faced with their favorite foods, almost everyone who struggles with weight loss is faced with this foe. Conquering the urge to binge is a necessary step in lifelong weight management.
9. Savoring My Food
Eating slowly and attentively enables you to prevent overeating. Not only does it help you listen to your body and enforce portion control, it makes you take note of what you're eating. If you're eating donuts, you'll recognize that and be able to stop yourself before you eat too many, that is, more than one. If you eat quickly or inattentively, you might not really realize that you're eating too much until it's too late.
10. Choosing A Balanced Diet
Choosing a well-balanced diet is key to weight loss. There is plenty of information out there for you. It's not the ability to find a balanced diet plan that's the problem - it's sticking to it. Try to find a well-balanced diet that fits your personal tastes.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 1:43:54 PM | 7 COMMENTS
THURSDAY, MAY 17, 2007
The Eight Signs of Emotional Eating
A lot of people ask me, "How do I know if I am overeating for emotional reasons?"
Luckily, figuring this out is one of the easiest things to do. There are very specific symptoms and signs that you can look for. If any of the following statements sound like they could apply to you, then it's likely you are struggling with emotional eating.
1. My hunger comes on suddenly.
Physical hunger comes on slowly. Hunger from emotional eating often comes on quickly and suddenly.
2. I crave specific foods - generally not carrot sticks or steamed broccoli.
Cravings for specific, usually unhealthy foods is a sign of emotional eating. Often people like the rush they get from satisfying their cravings. That rush is fulfilling emotional hunger.
3. My hunger feels urgent - I need a particular food right away and I'm willing to walk out of my way, or get in your car late at night, or raid my kid's Halloween candy to get it.
Physical hunger, unless you haven't eaten for a very long time, is usually pretty patient. It will wait for food. Emotional hunger demands to be satisfied immediately.
4. My hunger is often paired with an upsetting emotion - if I backtrack a few hours or a few days I'll usually find an upsetting event and feeling that triggered the urge.
Hunger that's connected to an upsetting emotion or situation is definitely emotional hunger. Physical hunger is not typically triggered by emotions.
5. My eating habits involve unconscious eating - all of a sudden I'm eating ice-cream and I find the whole container is gone.
When you're eating for physical reasons, you are usually mindful of what you're doing. If you catch yourself eating "just because," then it's likely you're eating for emotional reasons.
6. I don't stop eating in response to being full - I keep wanting more of the taste of the food.
Physical hunger doesn't need to be stuffed in order to be satisfied. Emotional hunger on the other hand often demands more and more food to feel satisfied.
7. My hunger isn't located in belly - I crave the taste of a certain food in my mouth or I can't stop thinking of a certain food.
Feeling hungry in this way is usually a sign of emotional hunger. Physical hunger is happy to get what it can, while emotional hunger usually focuses on specific tastes and textures.
8. After I satisfy my hunger, I am often filled with a sense of regret or guilt.
Feeding your body what it needs is not something to feel guilty about. If you feel guilty after you eat, it's likely because part of you knows you're not eating just to satisfy physical hunger.
If it sounds like you could make any of these statements, it's likely you are struggling with physical hunger.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 9:53:47 AM | 10 COMMENTS
TUESDAY, MAY 15, 2007
Loneliness and Overeating
"The worst loneliness is not to be comfortable with yourself."
Mark Twain
Many people have recently posted about their feelings of loneliness. Loneliness is a big issue in our society and it plays a big role in emotional eating.
Loneliness plays a big role in many types of eating but particularly night binging. My son is going to be seven next week. But I have been raising him alone since he was two months old. I used to notice that a couple of hours after dinner I would wander into the kitchen where I'd have a cookie, then I'd need something salty so I'd have a few chips or a piece of cheese, then sweet again so I'd finish a container of ice-cream. I wasn't even hungry in the first place.
So, what was happening?
For many people, and I was one of them, the night brings up a lot of anxiety and loneliness. At night I used to think about how much I missed raising my son with a partner. The house would be quiet without the noise of a toddler and my thoughts and fears would get too loud. The sound of chewing would distract me from the noise in my head. Only you can answer what you are lonely for; is it love, sex, friends, children, family?
We work in cubicles, we live in isolated apartments, and we parent our children alone. Human beings are social creatures. While we may benefit from solitude, most of us don't like to be alone. I wrote the Mark Twain quote on top because, for me, a lot of my loneliness went away as I became more comfortable with myself and my circumstances. I didn't want to be raising a child alone, but I was. I didn't always like that I was at home caring for a child while all my single friends still had their freedom, but it was a choice I made. The more I could accept reality and be comfortable with myself, the less I needed food. Now, my nights are different. I use the nights to read, watch Netflix, catch up with friends on the phone, and take care of the house.
We at Shrink Yourself understand that getting support on this journey is so important. We are currently working on creating message boards so that you can support each other. I will moderate the boards and answer any questions you have. In the meantime, please post your comments on the most current blog post.
As trite as this may sound, you are not alone, I am reading your comments and understand your struggle.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 1:17:45 PM | 15 COMMENTS
MONDAY, APRIL 30, 2007
The Deep Roots of Emotional Eating
The reason our program is 12 weeks long and the Shrink Yourself book is 273 pages is because emotional eating is not quite as simple as figuring out that you eat to feel better, or you eat to avoid feeling bad. Yes, noticing those patterns is an essential part of changing them, but it's not the only thing. One member commented that those things feel obvious, and for some people they are. But in the deeper part of the program (the last four weeks) and the deeper parts of the book (the Safety, Rebellion and Emptiness Layers), you start to see how deeply rooted and complex emotional eating patterns can be. They can be so deeply rooted that many people sabotage their dieting success. Somewhere in their mind, they actually believe that it's better to be fat. It's this deeper part, the part that is resistant to change, that we'll help you find.
It took me time to find my hunger switch, the things that made me want to eat. For example, last week under a work deadline I ate four cookies while working at my desk. In the moment, I remembered being an art major in High School and needing a one-pound bag of M&M's to get me through long nights at my drafting table. I felt lonely and overwhelmed in the basement of my house. I've learned not to eat after seven o'clock, so eating cookies at midnight was strange for me, but there must've been some of the old feelings of loneliness and overwhelm lingering in me. Tonight, when I needed to work, yet again the cookies tempted me. This time, I said, "No." I found that I survived. I still feel a bit lonely and overwhelmed but at least I don't have the guilt of eating the wrong food to contend with. I know that food can't fill the emptiness I had as a kid, and it can't fill the emptiness I sometimes still feel today.
It may take you time to find your hunger switch, too. Please be patient with yourself.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 11:58:58 PM | 14 COMMENTS
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 25, 2007
Best Comment of the Week
I just wanted to post a comment but I did not know where to go. I just wanted to say that your site and the work I have done thru you is one of the best things that ever happened to me. I was finally able to break through some logstanding issues and some I did not even know where there! I am very grateful for your program and I recommend it to everyone I know. Thank You.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 10:54:04 PM | 1 COMMENTS
TUESDAY, APRIL 24, 2007
April is Emotional Overeating Awareness Month
April is Emotional Overeating Awareness Month. In the next week, you might want to ask yourselves as you're about to eat, is my stomach hungry, do I need food right now or am I hungry for something else?
Are you hungry for love, fulfillment, stimulation, friendship, success?
If you answer "yes" to any of those questions, my challenge to you just for this week is to take one small action towards having the things you really want instead of eating. It could be doing your overdue taxes, reconnecting with an old friend, cleaning out the garage, taking a bath, joining a book club or anything you are hungry for.
If you take this challenge, please report on your experiences by hitting comments below.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 10:07:11 AM | 6 COMMENTS
FRIDAY, APRIL 06, 2007
Good Housekeeping Article Recognizes Emotional Eating
In the April, 2007 issue of Good Housekeeping, Caroline Bollinger wrote about Slim Down Secrets. It's an article that profiles how six or seven different women finally lost the weight they wanted (they each had about 100 lbs. to lose each)
Each one reached a place where she came to see the way she was using food to feel better. Here are some of the things the women said, "I often ate to fill an emptiness inside;" "I was miserable and to dull the pain, I'd eat;" "my worst habit was snacking when I was stressed, bored, or wanted a reward for doing something well;" and "food became my medication."
These are all descriptions of Emotional Eating. Each of the women above had to deal with those issues before she could commit to a sensible eating plan, and finally lose the weight she wanted.
One woman said, "there was always the knowledge that my life was meant to be more."
I know I felt this way when I was carrying extra weight. Ironically, extra weight included extra emotional baggage. What are the ways that you know your life is meant to be more?
I invite you to search, to dream, and to share your comments on this board.
In the June issue of Good Housekeeping, Dr. Gould will be talking more about Emotional Eating and the Shrink Yourself method.
POSTED BY !MICHELLE! | 2:59:16 PM | 2 COMMENTS
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The Shrink Yourself Blog
The Shrink Yourself Blog, hosted by Michelle Fiordaliso, clinical director of Shrink Yourself, gives you expert info on emotional eating.
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Recent Posts
Why People Binge
The Secret Ingredient For Success
Are You Ready For A Warm Bath?
Successful Resolutions for the New Year
Another Year... Another Diet?
Checking Out in Advance
Riding 100 Miles Uphill
Why Diets Fail
Eating the Past
Drama, Trauma, or Abuse
Do Not Shut Your Mind Off, Turn It On!
Count to 10
Are you a Runaway?
Case Study: Feeling Deprived
Fathers, Mothers, Sisters and Brothers
THE TALE OF TWO SISTERS
All or None Thinking
TRUE WILL
Three Forms of Will Power
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Origins of a Food Obsession
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How Does Doubt Make YOU Eat?
What Makes YOU Eat Too Much?
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Married, Lonely and Hungry
Messages From Your Mind
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From Out of Sight to Insight
An Insight A Day, Keeps the Pounds Away
Numbing the Mind with Food
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Emotional Eating: Blessing or Curse?
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Food Addiction & Food Obsession
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Why People Binge
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Take a Warm Bath
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Same Same but Different
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You're Not Alone in Your Efforts to Lose Weight
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