Food noise. How often do we hear the term these days? Although it’s not generally  accompanied by a definition, we instinctively sense what it means—the whirlwind of thoughts about food that plague our minds seemingly 24/7. They’re like a bad headache, sometimes dull and sometimes pounding, but never quite gone.  According to “Food noise: definition, measurement, and future research directions,” food noise is “persistent thoughts about food that are perceived by the individual as being unwanted and/or dysphoric and may cause harm to the individual, including social, mental, or physical problems. Food noise is distinguished from routine food-related thoughts by its intensity and intrusiveness, resembling rumination.” Food noise isn’t the same for everyone but is commonly experienced as unpleasant and unwanted. It generally involves self-judgment about what, when and how much to eat, pressure to make “the right” decisions, intrusiveness into and distraction from other thoughts, feelings and activities, focusing on...

This is an excerpt from “On the causes of obesity and its treatment: The end of the beginning” by Jeffrey M. Friedman from Cell Metabolism (vol 37, issue 3, pp 570-577,  March 04, 2025. It’s worth reading because it reinforces the fact (yes, fact) that overeating is not due to poor self-control or self-discipline. It’s not a lifestyle choice but is highly influenced by genetics and heredity. It’s worth reading because it will change your view of your eating and weight and your understanding of what often drives it.    Conclusions and the future Thirty years ago, obesity was considered by many to be a lifestyle disorder, the management of which was limited to a recommendation, first made by Hippocrates, that patients eat less and exercise more. Adipose tissue was viewed as a passive vessel storing energy in times of surfeit and discharging during privation. Also, the role of intestinal hormones...

I recall my binge-eating days from long ago with vivid memories of my thoughts about what I’d eaten or would be eating. Or, of course, what I wouldn’t be eating because I was dieting that day, week or month. Back then, I was mostly chiding myself for making poor choices or feeling righteous because I was eating what I was “supposed to.”  What do you think about when you’re eating? The above thoughts are “normal” fordysregulated eaters and, if you’re reading this blog, they probably sound all too familiar. You may not even know what it would be like to eat and not have the thoughts you have now. After all, most people in our culture are either dieting or unconsciously rebelling against it. Sadly, even when we do the latter, it still frames the way we think about food. Take a minute to consider and jot down thoughts you have...

In 2011, I wrote a blog entitled "Eyes on Your Own Plate” about issues that often crop up when people dine together—how they scrutinize what and how much others eat or don’t eat, and how to handle often uncalled for comments about food decisions. And here I am watching fuel get added to the fire now that GLP-1s have jumped into the food and weight arena and taken over dinner table conversation. Nowadays we not only (still) take sneak peeks at what others eat and worry what they’ll think of our choices and consumption, we’re also comparing experiences with how weight-loss drugs impact our eating and weight.  It used to be that our conversations (well, for some of us) were about the latest diet or our recent failures to give up binge-eating. Or about what our therapist said about the roots of our emotional eating. It was bad enough that we...

Many clients find themselves in environments that aren’t conducive to mindful eating when they’re outside around people who might distract them from connecting to appetite. In these cases, how do you screen out what’s external? Here are some simple tips for appetite connectivity wherever in restaurants, parks, airplanes, etc. Wear earphones suggests a client. They do two things. First, they keep out external noise and help you stay connected to yourself. Second, they deter conversation, broadcasting the message that you’re focused on something and don’t want to be disturbed. You can wear them and not be listening to anything. You can then eat and zero into appetite signals and no one will be the wiser. Another approach is to always bring a book or magazine with you—then read it (or pretend to). When eating, stop to take a bite, then return to reading. Books work better than magazines which you might...

My client Pamela came to see me more than a decade ago for habitual overeating, unwanted snacking, bingeing, and emotional eating. She ended these behaviors a few years into our work and we moved on to discuss other subjects. In her late 70s, long divorced and living alone, she’d recently begun the process of moving from her home to a retirement community—finding a real estate agent, cleaning out and selling her three-story house, seeking interim living while her villa was being built, and managing the two moves ahead of her. Though organized and intelligent, Pamela tended toward anxiety and admitted having succumbed to decision fatigue and feeling stressed. As the process moved along, she found herself occasionally once again looking to food for comfort. Although she had friends and family to share her emotional burdens with and other interests to distract her, she still sought out food to make herself feel...

My client Andie describes dinnertime at her house this way: “I like the TV on and hate cooking, so I just fix something easy which isn’t usually nutritious, but I’m so tired when I get home from work, the last thing I want is to make dinner. My son’s usually next to me on the couch doing his homework and I try to help him while I eat and watch TV.”  Can you spot the “normal” eating time bombs lying in wait in Andie’s description of dinnertime? I call this minefield versus mindful eating, a set up for not enjoying food yet overeating it anyway. Here are other minefields to avoid: Eating when you’re beset by emotion. When you’re upset, you want to move toward, not away, from feelings. The goal is to find out what’s going on within you: what you’re feeling, why you’re feeling it, and what to do...

Do you know people who seem totally comfortable in their own skin around food? They eat whatever they want whenever they want in whatever quantity they feel like. If people comment on their feeding habits, you can tell they couldn’t care less. My guess is that these folks are this “self-focused” in many (if not all) areas of their lives. Let’s talk about how they tune out what others think and tune into themselves. Before going down this path, however, I need to point out that never caring what people think is not a healthy trait. Humans evolved to live in harmony with others and take their opinions and feelings seriously. We’re designed to live in community, which means not always following our own needs and wants.  That said, we’re also individuals meant to think for ourselves, especially when making decisions about how to feed ourselves. Just because your friends are...

Struggling with food, we seek ideas from others on what and how to eat. On the merry-go-round of eating disorders, every diet is the brass ring, every person who seems to eat “right” is a model to imitate—both of which are exactly the wrong approaches. To have a positive relationship with food, instead look inward at your “eat-iosyncracies.”  My client Pru knew restrictive eating regimes weren’t the answer yet didn’t trust herself with food after decades of overeating and weight gain. To point her toward the path of “normal” eating, I shared some anecdotes about my evolution to enjoying a healthy relationship with food and my body along with my idiosyncratic ways of eating.  When I was first reading about appetite-driven eating, I took the concept of figuring out what I wanted to eat very seriously. One night in Boston, I threw on my down parka over my pj’s and headed...

The Whale is one powerful movie, yet I’m unsure whether to recommend it to people with eating disorders and weight concerns. As I’ve avoided reading any reviews about it, this blog is purely my reactions to a film about Charlie, (spoiler alert!) a man who literally eats himself to death, masterfully played by Brendan Fraser. If this film was disturbing to me, an ED therapist who’s fully recovered from decades of emotional and binge-eating, I wonder what it will be like for people in the throes of runaway eating. I worry it will be so upsetting they’ll head right for the cookie jar or feel revulsion for Charlie, or intense shame toward themselves for their eating or their size. My wish is that they’d feel so filled with compassion for him that they’d begin to soften and feel compassion for themselves. The film is about an online writing teacher carrying such...

In a very interesting article (NY Times Opinion, 6/4/23), “What Ozempic Reveals about Desire,” Maia Szalavitz explains how the brain works vis a vis food. As a fully recovered binge-eater and eating disorders therapist for 35 years, it would be almost impossible for me not to have a fascination with what goes on inside us (and went on inside me) when we’re out of control around food. I hope that writing about the science helps you understand your eating better. By discussing Ozempic and other so-called “weight-loss” drugs, I am in no way endorsing them or encouraging their use. One enlightening nugget in the article is that the brain registers two primary types of pleasure according to Kent Berridge, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of Michigan. One he labels “wanting,” about which he says, “The positive side of wanting is feeling empowered and focused on getting what...

  Last year I blogged on the link between Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and eating problems (the diagnosis is now ADHD, not ADD) and I want to give you additional info on the subject from Is There a Link Between ADHD and Overeating. Here are some highlights, though I recommend you read the whole article if you have questions about whether you have ADHD or not or how it may relate to your eating. “ . . . research associates ADHD with eating disorders that involve overeating. There is also scientific evidence to support a link between ADHD and obesity.” “Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a common neurodevelopmental  condition that can produce a range of symptoms relating to the inability to focus, impulsive or hyperactive behavior, or both.” “As ADHD involves difficulty with staying focused, impulsive behavior, or both,  people with the condition may find it hard to...

Not only don’t many people know what neurodivergence means, they also may not realize that many neurodivergent people also have eating disorders. My guess is that you’re more likely to recognize the terms ADHD (yes, ADHD), autistic, autism spectrum disorder, and (the no longer in use) diagnosis of Asperger’s Syndrome. You may even be neurodivergent and never have considered that you’re not what’s called neurotypical.  In fact, it’s much harder for neurodivergent folks to deal with food and food problems than someone more neurotypical. So, some facts about neurodiversity and eating disorders which will hopefully help you and anyone you know who fits into this category better manage their eating and their life. https://www.eatingdisorderhope.com/blog/neurodiversity-eating-disorder-treatment-patients “Neurodiversity represents the idea that the ways that humans interact socially, mentally, and cognitively can vary drastically from person to person. This term is often used in relation to those diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). ASD...

I know most of you are trying to eat intuitively, according to appetite by deciding when, what and how much to eat. This is a must-have skill to enjoy a positive relationship with food. Another important factor is your style and frequency of eating. Are you a nibbler, nosher, grazer, night snacker, 1 meal-a-dayer, or someone who eats by the clock? Do you eat when your tummy rumbles or hold out until a planned mealtime? The question of when and how often to eat—our eating frequency footprint, if you will—is something to consider as you move toward becoming a “normal” eater. If you’re to deepen your connection with your appetite, it’s vital to get a sense of when you’re hungry, how long you usually wait to eat between meals (or food interactions such as a piece of fruit, protein bar, or handful of nuts). We each have an eating frequency footprint,...

Eating intuitively means keeping track of your appetite just as you sense other bodily functions. If I were to ask you any time during the day or night “Are you sleepy?,” my guess is that you’d be able to answer me without thinking much about it. Ditto if I were to inquire whether you felt warm or cold, high or low energy. At least one would hope you’d be able to give me a response fairly easily. This is because our bodies are built to track these kinds of physiological functions. How else would we survive? We need to be exquisitely in tune with our body’s needs or we would perish. Our need for food is one of those necessities. The way I think of appetite is that we are consciously or unconsciously tracking it all the time. For example, if I asked you right now what your hunger level is...

Too many dysregulated eaters try to copy a particular style or approach to eating rather than develop one that’s evolves from their life experience and leads to embracing best practices for them. Their attitude is “tell me what to do and I’ll do it,” rather than “give me the information and I’ll make it mine in my own way.” I speak as a psychotherapist, author and recovered weight-obsessed dieter and world-class binge-eater, when I say there is no one right way to eat. There is only a best way that works for each of us.  My client Kara is an example of finding your way through the morass of information on what and how to eat. We’ve been working on healing her dysregulated eating for years and she’s read every book or podcast I’ve recommended and then some. She’s dieted and run marathons, been a gym rat and let her membership...

Grief eating is a term used when people over-rely on food to cope with loss of a loved one, even a pet. Of course, some people lose their appetite when they’re upset or sad, but many others turn to food—mostly those with fats and carbohydrates—to deal with distressing feelings. As my colleague and friend Mary Anne Cohen, director of the New York Center for Eating Disorders, says: “Emotional eaters are prone to derail, detour, and divert difficult feelings through food. And grief is the most difficult of feelings.” Grief is one of the most difficult feelings because of its permanence: What was will never be again. Grief can be due to the death of someone (or something) dear to you, losing a well-loved job or home, or leaving behind what you dearly loved. We grieve over lost youth and health, diminishing abilities, and irrevocable changes in our lives. All overeating due...

Looking for guidance on intuitive eating? Here are “10 Principles of Intuitive Eating” by Evelyn Tribole, MS, RDN, CEDRD-S and Elyse Resch, MS, RDN, CEDS-S, Fiaedp, FADA, FAND, authors of the book Intuitive Eating: A Revolutionary Anti-Diet Approach.   1. Reject the Diet Mentality Throw out the diet books and magazine articles that offer you the false hope of losing weight quickly, easily, and permanently. Get angry at diet culture that promotes weight loss and the lies that have led you to feel as if you were a failure every time a new diet stopped working and you gained back all of the weight. If you allow even one small hope to linger that a new and better diet or food plan might be lurking around the corner, it will prevent you from being free to rediscover Intuitive Eating. 2. Honor Your Hunger Keep your body biologically fed with adequate energy...

Warning: This blog is not trying to entice you to take a weight-loss drug. Nor is it meant to dissuade you from taking one. My purpose is to share what ED recovery and 35 years of experience as an ED therapist tell me about these hot new drugs.  For a while I’ve been working with two dysregulated eaters who are, respectively, on Ozempic or Mounjaro. Both have lost significant weight, suffer few side effects, and for the first time in recent memory are enjoying ongoing feelings of regulated hunger and fullness. To say their inner lives have changed dramatically is no exaggeration. Unless they don’t intend to rely on either drug for life because they don’t care to take medication they absolutely don’t need, or because the cost is prohibitive (or both), consider what might happen when they stop taking it. From what I’ve read, hunger and fullness and dysregulated eating...

Interview with my good friend and colleague, Mary Anne Cohen, LCSW, Eating Disorders Expert Extraordinaire  1. Tell us a little about yourself professionally.      I have been a psychotherapist for 50 years! Forty years ago, I founded The New York Center for Eating Disorders to offer treatment for people with binge eating, bulimia, anorexia, chronic dieting, and body image dissatisfaction as well as help for couples and families. I hosted my own radio show on eating disorders for three years and have written three books on eating disorders. I am the professional book reviewer for EDReferral.com and just completed my 90th review: https://www.edreferral.com/books.     2. How did you get into the eating disorders field?      I struggled with binge eating on and off from childhood through my early 20s. Shame, isolation, dieting, and bargaining with myself did not help much! I began therapy and spent time in Overeaters Anonymous which was...

I hoped this blog title would catch your interest. It’s big news, really big news that your gut microbia might be what’s making you eat the whole bag of Oreos and not just one, or an entire bar of Godiva chocolate rather than two tiny squares. Of course, the studies on sweets’ bingeing and microbia is only being done on mice, not people. But what if their conclusions are correct and something physiological rather than a moral failing has been causing you to binge on sweets?  Before I give you the science behind this theory, let me share my fear with you: that even if you’re given proof that your sweets’ bingeing or part of it may be caused by your gut microbia, you’ll still cling to the idea that it’s your fault that you overdo with food. You’ll still blame yourself for lack of self-discipline, no willpower or poor self-care....

I can’t be the only person on the planet who objects to the word “treats” when referring to food, can I? A treat is defined as being “an event or item that is out of the ordinary and gives great pleasure” My problem is that by putting certain foods in the category of “treats” we might be doing more harm than good.  I’m thinking that eaters might do better embracing theses foods—yes, the ones high in sugar, fat or salt and often all three yummily mixed together—rather than keeping them at arm’s length. Seeing them as “out of the ordinary” might mean to some folks that they’re rarely eaten or eaten only on special occasions. My fear is that many dysregulated eaters might see treats as restrictive to only certain occasions. During the holidays, I often hear clients talk about family foods that are treats—anything from soups to breads to desserts....

If you’re someone who regularly eats without being hungry or past full or satisfied, you’ll want to read, “The goal conflict model: a theory of the hedonic regulation of eating behavior,” which nails why you engage in this behavior. The argument of its author Wolfgang Stroebe is simple: “reduced responsiveness to hunger and satiation cues is not due to a lack of ability to recognize such cues, but to a more powerful motive governing the food intake of people with a weight problem, namely eating enjoyment.” Of course, everyone who is higher weight does not have a “weight problem.” People have differing genetics, body structure and metabolisms. But the conflict Stroebe describes is exactly what I felt when I was an overeater: I wanted both to enjoy food and lose weight, which led me to doing neither very effectively. How can you enjoy food when you’ve been brainwashed to obsess and...

In the interest of helping you understand how you developed dysregulated eating habits, I thought I’d share my story with you. All our stories, of course, will be different but will also have themes and threads in common. It’s important to remember that not just one thing derailed your eating. Rather, it was a combination of factors beyond your control. It’s nothing you did and it wasn’t your choice to have a dysfunctional relationship with food. It’s something you learned from circumstances and now must unlearn. First off, my father was not a great role model with food. He was an overeater, in part likely from growing up during the Great Depression. And perhaps his sense of food deprivation was also due to how his parents related to food. I don’t know because his mother died before I was born and his father died when I was a toddler. At any...

Teaching Clients Why It’s Okay to “Waste” Food (reprinted from Gürze-Salucore Eating Disorders newsletter, July 29, 2023) A client and I had an interesting chat about wasting food. She was raised on a shoestring budget, with her grandmother insisting that everyone finish the food on their plate. I understood: My father would sit with me and read the New York World-Telegram until every morsel on my plate was in my stomach. He acted as if unfinished food was reason enough for the major crimes unit to haul me away. Though he was raised during the Depression when money was tight, by the time I came along he’d become a successful Manhattan podiatrist. I understand how old habits die hard, if at all. Now, I go out of my way to explain to dysregulated eaters that what we came to believe as children when we were told not to waste food was...

Did you ever stop and analyze what drives your dysfunctional eating? Specifically, whether your thoughts about food are rational? I bet not. Irrational thinking is the major cause of dysregulated eating. Here’s one common example. My client Jonah described how he always wanted to eat or buy two of everything. We hadn’t talked about this issue before and he explained that, for example, getting two hamburgers for a bit more than the price of one felt so right. For example, he thought the idea of paying $6 for two burgers when he’d have to pay $4 for one was terrific.  I told him that would work if he were buying them in a store and was planning to have two meals for the six bucks. He said, no, he ate whatever he bought at once, whether he was hungry for the second one or not and was tickled pink knowing how...

Here’s a 7-day plan to connect with your appetite and emotions. For one week, follow the guidelines below to learn and practice a different aspect of connecting to yourself. Each day you’ll have one experience to focus on for that whole day. If you like what you learn in a week, try it for another. It will help move you closer to “normal” eating. Day 1: How do I feel in my body? Don’t critique your body. Just neutrally notice how you feel in it. Which parts move well and which don’t? Connect to your body, observing how it feels sitting, standing, walking, dancing, resting. Stay away from the mirror. Repeat, stay away from the mirror. You’re seeking a view from the inside out, not the outside in. Day 2: How hungry am I? When you think you want food, note your hunger level using a 0 (none) to 10 (very)...

A client and I had an interesting chat about wasting food. She was raised on a tight budget, with her grandmother insisting that everyone finish the food on their plates. I understood: My father would sit with me and read the NY Telegram until every morsel on my plate was socked away into my stomach. Many of us were raised to think that throwing out food was reason to call the major crimes unit to haul us away. Many of us would be wrong.  What we sensed and came to believe when people told us as children not to waste food was that we were bad if we did. Such an act was unacceptable, shameful, disapproved of by whoever was in authority. For whatever reasons, they were trying to make us feel the behavior was wrong because it never occurred to them that they weren’t right. If you’re serious about becoming...

I was at a birthday bash when, the birthday “girl” announced to some 60 guests that dessert would be served, urging everyone to get up and on line for it. “Who doesn’t want cake?” she asked. Her question reminded me of another blog I’d written about cake which got me thinking about what it is about this food that makes it such a draw. One thought is that cake is viewed as special, traditionally served on certain occasions only such as birthday, nuptial and anniversary celebrations and holidays. We think “cake” and it reminds us of happy times which usually involve friends or family or both. So, cake represents joy, coming together, and a festive mood. Who wouldn’t want that? Cake is also served at the end of a meal, leaving us on a high note, signaling that the meal is over and leaving us with a sweet taste in our...

Becoming a more intuitive eater is neither magic nor mystery. When I think about how I learned to become one, I can break down some of the steps and practices I continue to use (though more instinctively and unconsciously now). Here they are: Tune out everyone but yourself. It doesn’t matter that Uncle Jerry cooked your favorite dessert if you’re full or not in the mood for it. It doesn’t matter if your friends all order fries and you want a baked potato or if they all decide upon salads and you want lasagna. When you’re at a restaurant, stop asking people what they’re planning to order. Why do you even do that: curiosity, for ideas about choices or because you want to eat something similar to them? Pretty much everything you need to know about ordering is on the menu or through asking waitstaff.Tune into yourself. Ask yourself how hungry...

I don’t know about you, but I heard enough commands, demands, and admonishments as a child to last me a lifetime. We all did because that’s pretty much how adults talk to children and, age appropriately, how things should be. You don’t ask a five-year-old if she wishes to hold your hand crossing a busy street, but tell her, “Take my hand.” You don’t ask a 10-year-old if he wants to be playing with matches and, instead, say, “Please stop doing that.”  However, if that’s all you ever hear as a child and adolescent, that is, what you should or shouldn’t do, you’re going to start resenting not being able to use your developing mind to make decisions yourself. And the more you’re subject to demands and commands, the stronger your resentment will grow until you feel like you can’t stand and won’t tolerate anyone bossing you around.  The problem is...

A client was describing to me what it was like for her when she used to be obsessed with food, said now from a vantage point of being a far more “normal” eater. She joked about how she used to be, but I could hear the pain in her voice as she remembered. Her description also brought me back to my binge-eating days which could not be more different than my life now.  My client described her “abnormal” eating days as follows: “I thought about food all day long. I agonized over what to eat, was consumed by the eating process and, post-eating, spent endless time ruminating about what or how much I’d eaten 24/7/365.” This description reminded me of how I was always mentally in two places as a dysregulated eater. I was in reality—at work, with friends or family, skiing, dancing, watching TV or going to the movies, or...

Many clients have dieted and binged for so long that they can’t believe they could really eat “normally.” I don’t care how long you’ve had dysregulated eating; you can learn to eat according to appetite. In order to do this, you need to be ready for all the journey entails. Readiness doesn’t come in one fell swoop but grows gradually over time. Why is readiness important? If you’re not at the point where you really want to eat intuitively, you won’t be able to sustain motivation for the process this entails. Too many clients approach intuitive eating as they would a diet: I’ll do this for a while, and I’ll lose weight. That kind of thinking is antithetical to becoming a “normal” eater. It won’t work. Intuitive eating is nothing like a weight-loss diet which you feel rah rah about and do until you shed the pounds you want. It is...

I’ve blogged about slowing down eating, but it’s hard to do if you’re someone who generally races around at warp speed. If you tend to be productivity oriented, you may unintentionally zip through life—cleaning, putting away groceries, paying bills, driving, brushing your teeth, walking, and gassing up the car. And you might have a hard time slowing down eating because you’re accustomed to doing everything in fast forward. I know this because, though I taught myself to eat slowly, I used to do most other things quickly. When I worked at my first job after social work school, my colleagues would see me zipping toward them and flatten themselves against the wall yelling, “Watch out, here she comes.” And I’ve had more black and blue marks on my body than most people from bumping into things I wouldn’t have bumped into if I’d been moving at a more reasonable pace. I...

I saw an interesting Netflix movie specifically about anorexia but also about eating disorder (ED) problems and recovery in general: To the Bone. It was painful to watch as an ED therapist (though not as someone fully recovered from chronic dieting, body dysmorphia, binge-eating and bulimia). Though it may make people with active eating disorders or in early recovery uncomfortable, this is not a reason to avoid watching it. I’m not about to critique the film, which is, like most films, imperfect in some ways (just like us!). For that, here’s an excellent review. My purpose is to point out what can be gleaned from the movie that is helpful to putting an eating disorder behind you. The story follows “Ellen” through treatment for anorexia. Previous inpatient stays have fallen short, so she heads for a place that’s a last resort. It’s common for dysregulated eaters to enter treatment and drop...

What prevents you from being a mindful eater? Mind you (pun intended), I’m not encouraging you to be a perfect eater but, rather, one who generally puts enough attention on what you’re eating to enjoy it and stay attuned to appetite signals. Here’s my take on what gets in your way: You’re mentally distracted by “all you have to do” and therefore don’t believe you have or deserve time to relish food and feed yourself in such a way that you know when you’ve had enough and are comfortable stopping. Your body may be sitting at the table—or more likely standing at the stove, plopped on the couch in front of the TV, or hunched over your computer—but your mind is miles away obsessed with all the things you feel you “should” be doing. Your focus is on everything but eating. People looking at you might see a person having dinner,...

Over the years, I’ve watched clients with troubled childhoods intentionally parent their children the opposite of how they were raised, eating and otherwise. Sadly, this strategy doesn’t fare any better than mindlessly following the parental modeling they received. Of course, there’s an obvious difference between blindly doing what your parents did to you and considering their approach and finding it lacking. The problem is that too many parents don’t make decisions rationally and, instead, do so in reaction to how they felt being raised a certain way. While retreating from a parental style may avoid one set of problems, going to the opposite extreme creates another. Here's an example. One of my clients was forced to diet and eat the food her mother was into on her various fad diets. Her mother was very strict and, not surprisingly, my client developed an eating problem, including sneak eating and overeating due to...

I make no bones about my disinterest in cooking and not being a foodie, often commiserating with clients who don’t enjoy meal preparation. Where we differ is that I value eating nutritiously. If you don’t like cooking—and therefore don’t do it—it’s important to recognize why and make sure that, in spite of your dislike, you eat in a way that serves your body. When I can get clients past saying, “Well, I just don’t like it” or “I hate it,” their reasons for not wishing to put forth effort in the kitchen usually fall into the following categories:  I don’t know what to eat. This generally means they’ve been dieting for so long that they have no idea what foods to choose or which they enjoy, that is, they’ve been brainwashed about foods being “good” or “bad” and truly don’t know what they like.I don’t have time to cook. I might (but...

I’ve been talking with a client about moving herself and her family away from unhealthy eating to a more “normal”, healthy lifestyle. As I told her, it’s quite simple but not quick and easy. What I mean is that there are concrete actions to take, but that doesn’t mean that everyone will be on board right away. Here are my suggestions for making the transition from a way of eating that doesn’t serve your family to one that does. Be clear on your goals: If you’re generating the transition, think long and hard about your goals and how you got to the place you’re in with food. Notice that I’m not using the word “switch” which implies going from here to there quickly. It’s better to think in terms of transition over time. Write down five goals for your family, for example: Eat together as a family X number of times/week,...

Have you ever heard of “Mindful Emotional Eating”? I hadn’t until a few years ago when books and articles started popping up on the subject. I even wrote a blurb for a colleagues’ book about it based on the belief that if someone is going to regularly engage in emotional eating, why not make it more mindful. But the more I read about it, the more the concept simply doesn’t make sense to me.  Assuming that someone is trying to end a pattern (key word here) of emotional eating, let’s definitely encourage them to have compassion for themselves when they seek food to deal with the blues or the blahs. Let’s help them understand that there should be no guilt, shame or judgment involved because they are not doing a bad thing; they’re actually trying to make themselves feel better! They’re doing what they know and what most of us do...

I’m not sure when TV watching plus eating became de rigueur, but perhaps this entwinement is based on movie viewing in theatres while snacking on popcorn. It’s not an unhealthy habit per se—except if you’re trying to be mindful about eating and consume less food. The way to learn new habits is by focusing on them with 100% concentration which is the antithesis of what happens when glued to your set.  Most of us watch TV to become absorbed in what we’re seeing and turn off our minds. Whether we’re into programs about the news, travel, or history, movies or our favorite binge-worthy shows, the idea is to escape consciousness and relax. There’s not a thing wrong with doing that. We need to turn off our busy brains and give them a rest and watching TV is a fine way to do that.  But while our thinking mind is resting as...

Dysregulated eaters have some unhealthy habits, and I don’t mean just with food. I’m talking about how you habitually speak to your selves. Two particular no-no’s stand out above the rest: finger-pointing and finger-wagging. Finger-pointing, aka blaming, is when you constantly accuse yourself of doing wrong, making mistakes, failing. It’s different than being accountable and taking responsibility for your eating or other actions. Finger-pointing is mean-spirited. It assumes that nothing bad can simply randomly occur in life. It doesn’t allow that people can lose track, slip up or even do their best and still fail. Its aim is to make someone at fault and assign blame for whatever is happening. An example is something a client we’ll call Fred does all the time. In his job as a manager, he’s always looking for who did what wrong. He ferrets out mistakes, then goes up and down the food chain to see...

I hadn’t intended to watch Diana: In Her Own Words and then an eating disorders colleague asked me my opinion about it. After viewing it, I thought how profoundly classic her personality traits and ED symptoms were and wondered if seeing it might help some of you in your recovery. I realize that not all of you have access to Netflix, so here are some take-aways from the documentary, my views of what stood out to me. Diana never felt she fit in and worried about it. How often do I hear that from clients? She had several sisters but didn’t sound as if she was particularly close with them in a sharing of feelings kind of way. By her report, her father was physically abusive to her mother. She says he hit her mother in front of the family. I’m going to take a not very big leap here to...

Although most of us use words such as food allergy, sensitivity and intolerance interchangeably, they are not the same. I learned this on my journey to find out which foods are causing me intestinal problems, in this case via a blood test. Fortunately, my handy dandy Lifestyle Eating and Performance (LEAP) MRT® Report (copyright Oxford Biomedical Technologies, Inc., version 8.17.20) provides a comprehensive, understandable tutorial on the subject which I thought I’d share with you in case you have any confusion about these terms.  The short distinction is thus: “The general consensus is that food allergy can be defined as any adverse reaction to food that involves our immune system”: food allergy and food sensitivity. “Food intolerance does not involve the immune system.” In a food allergy, the immunological triggering mechanism is called IgE and the most common food allergies are “peanuts, other nuts, shellfish, or foods containing sulfites. Food allergy...

Being in Recovery from Binge-Eating Disorder A guest blog by Dustin LindenSmith   I’m a 47-year-old married man with three kids living in Atlantic Canada and I self-diagnosed with Binge-Eating Disorder about five years ago. I first discovered how to use food for emotional comfort as a young child, but an alcoholic and abusive step-parent pushed me to turn towards heavy binge-eating in my early teens. I would consume vast quantities of food in secret—I could never seem to get “enough”—and then I’d go on a diet to lose the weight I had gained. In this way, I “dieted my way up” to over 300 pounds in college, and I repeated that cycle several more times in my life. I estimate that I’ve gained and lost over 850 pounds since the age of 10. Binge-Eating Disorder is often described as a chronic and compulsive binge-diet cycle, but to me, it felt...

While I strongly agree that no one should shame themselves or others for emotional eating during the pandemic (or any time), I disagree with some eating disorders clinicians who seem to be saying that under lockdown, it’s okay to eat emotionally on a regular basis. (“Don’t Be Ashamed of Those Extra Pounds” by Courtney Robin, 8/8/20, accessed 8/9/20). I think the problem in the article is that these two ideas have been lumped together when they are entirely separate. On the whole, turning to food for comfort is a behavior that eating disorders therapists discourage. If food were true emotional comfort with no downside, we would likely be out of business. But it isn’t. It’s only comforting while we’re thinking about what we’re going to eat and when we’re chewing. After swallowing, it’s all downhill. Aside from consequent guilt, shame and remorse which are a useless waste of energy, there are...

Why would anyone buy a whole bunch of their favorite foods and then eat them all at once? The answer is not that they were famished or afraid the food would go bad. It’s because they either feared that the food wouldn’t be available when they did want it or figured that they’d eventually eat it all anyway, so why not do it in one fell swoop. I truly hope that none of these reasons sound rational to you because they’re not. Dysregulated eaters are faced with a conundrum. On the one hand, intuitive eating therapists encourage them to keep favorite foods in the house to learn how to manage their urge to eat them simply because they’re there. On the other hand, every fiber of their bodies is screaming, “No, no, you have no idea what having them all within reach will do to me. Don’t you understand I’ll eat...

So many dysregulated eaters have dieted and obsessed about food for so long that it’s hard for them to imagine how they need to think, feel and act to have a healthy and sane relationship with food. Thanks to Judith Matz, LCSW (http://www.judithmatz.com) for laying out the path in this terrific chart which shows where you’ve been and where you’re going on the journey to become a “normal” eater. (“Body and Mind” by Alison Laurio, Social Work Advocates, Apr-May 2020, p. 24). DIET MENTALITY ATTUNED EATING External rules →→→→→→Internal cues Rigid→→→→→→→→→→Flexible Deprived →→→→→→→→Satisfied Guilt →→→→→→→→→→Pleasure Fear →→→→→→→→→→Trust Preoccupied→→→→→→→Empowered Weight loss →→→→→→→Nourishment Shame →→→→→→→→→Compassion Judgment→→→→→→→→Acceptance Oppressed  →→→→→→→Freedom In Control →→→→→→→→In charge Look over the chart and consider how much you want the qualities listed in the Attuned Eating column. How much do you wish to feel free, that you trust yourself, that you’re empowered and in charge? Are you willing to give...

No matter how hard I try to shift clients away from a weight focus, they often come back to it as a way to measure progress. Although I’ve blogged on other ways to assess forward movement (https://www.karenrkoenig.com/blog/measuring-progress-in-recovery) and (https://www.karenrkoenig.com/blog/ways-to-measure-progress-without-weighing-yourself), clients are so used to the ultimate culturally-approved standard, that they keep drifting back to it. The goal is to evaluate what and how you’re doing, from thoughts and urges for food when you’re not hungry to how compassionate you are with yourself when you overeat. Rather than write down or chart what you weigh or eat, instead, each day answer these questions about your eating and related issues. Urges: How often did I… feel the urge to eat when I wasn’t hungry? _____refrain from eating when I wasn’t hungry? _____eat when I wasn’t hungry? _____ Hunger: When I was hungry, how often did I . . . wait until I was...

For those of you who are raising children, what messages are you giving them about mealtimes which include when, what, where and how much to eat? “7 tips to make every family meal count” by Cara Rosenbloom (Sarasota Herald-Tribune, 12/2/19, E24) has some basic ideas for cohering and educating your family. I’m blogging on this subject because I fear that some dysregulated eaters don’t know the value of sharing structured meals and what they can teach children about our relationship with food.  Clients tell me that because they are stressed out, they feel overly taxed by food shopping and preparing. So they order take out, go out to dinner, or let their children grab whatever is in the refrigerator. All of the above is acceptable once in a while, but what does it teach your children if it’s a regular pattern? It says that food is incidental or even irrelevant to...