I’m years overdue blogging about my book, Words to Eat By: Using the Power of Self-talk to Transform Your Relationship with Food and Your Body, published in 2020. I wrote it based on the realization that all my clients with eating problems had the same barrier to eating “normally” and leading fulfilling lives: destructive self-talk.

It's hard to believe how attached we get to negative thoughts that pulse through our minds. It amazes me how people think they’re the only ones with self-talk problems. All 8.1 billion of us on the planet have them. I often catch myself mired in irrational mental meanderings and need to reroute to rational thinking. 

Words to Eat By is meant to help you rewire your brain around food and how you view yourself. In it, I explain in lay language how destructive self-talk gets stuck in our brains and how to unstick ourselves. Simply put, what we think produces our feelings which generate our actions. Yes, it’s as basic as that. The fact is that much of what many of us learned to say to ourselves, because our parents said it to themselves, to each other, or to us, is the exact wrong thing to say for mental health. No blame here, as they learned self-talk, just as we did, from their families and our culture.

The book starts out by describing destructive self-talk and why it hurts us. If you’re a regular reader of my blogs, you already know the words should, need to, ought to, have to, must, shouldn’t, and am supposed to are no-no’s in the world of constructive self-talk because they’re what we call external motivators. Next the book describes constructive self-talk, which is helpful, intentional, inspiring, empowering, loving and challenging. 

Words to Eat By includes self-talk to prevent and/or stop emotional eating or bingeing and reminds us that we have choice points of what we say to ourselves before, during and after eating. We can be shaming or show ourselves self-compassion, cruel or kind, self-blaming or forgiving. Because we have these choice points, the book includes a chapter on smart self-talk for self-caring and one on self-talk for social eating.

Because we can’t explore self-talk without understanding the importance of pride in what we think, say and do, the book includes a chapter on this crucial, misunderstood emotion to show how all our self-talk must be focused toward helping us feel proud. The book includes “Thoughts to Munch on Exercises” as well as case examples and studies. It will help readers who have no idea how to start improving their self talk know where to begin and reinforce those who’ve been trying to speak to themselves in more constructive ways but don’t know the best words to use. 

Best,

Karen