When the idea of "legalizing" food was introduced some three decades ago, I was just starting to work through my own dieting/binge-eating struggles. By the time I began to treat and write about disregulated eating, I was pretty much a “normal” eater and no longer thought about food as good or bad, legal or illegal. Now, I’m concerned with how much trouble disregulated eaters have with the term legalization. For too many of you, it seems to provide license to go hog wild with food which, of course, creates more problems than solutions. My ideas on legalizing food may differ from other experts, and hopefully will help those of you who are trying to expand food options constructively. Here's what legalization means (and has always meant) to me: I have the right to and, therefore, can eat anything I want any time in any quantity. For me, legalization is a belief...

A blog reader recently asked me to write more about undereating and the fear of becoming overweight. There are many similarities between undereaters and overeaters—using food as an emotional distraction or crutch, allowing weight to determine self-worth, dependence on inadequate life skills, and disconnection from appetite signals. However, there are also differences. Many undereaters believe they need to be in perfect control around food 24/7and obsess about it and their weight. I know, I used to be one myself. These thoughts fill up your head and dictate your life. You can’t go here or there because there might be edible temptation, food is the hollow center of your life, and the accursed enemy which must be battled daily. Societal reinforcement keeps behavior in place. Unless you’re walking skin and bones, everyone thinks it’s mahvelous how much control over food you have. After all, you are the American ideal, having vanquished your...

It’s essential to understand exactly which of your eating behaviors is off the mark. Okay, I hear some of you saying, All of them. Yet many of you do fine in one kind of eating situation and are plagued by dysfunction in others. Because you can’t fix a problem until you identify it, it’s time to target which specific eating behaviors get you into trouble. You may engage in binge-eating or consuming large quantities of food regardless of hunger and satisfaction, whether you start out hungry or not. In either case, you eat with little consciousness and total abandon and keep going until the food is gone or an outside event intervenes. A binge usually generates shame and remorse—and often a stomach ache. During binges you consume thousands of calories. Then there’s garden variety overeating in which you ignore satiation signals and regularly chow down way past full. Maybe the food...

On my Food and Feelings message board, members have been talking about what it takes to struggle in the moment to resist unwanted eating (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/foodandfeelings). There’s no easy formula that will make it happen, but understanding why you fail to struggle, struggle harder, or struggle until your rational self beats out disordered thinking will help you make wiser decisions. Along with learning essential life skills and reframing irrational beliefs, there’s nothing more valuable in overcoming disregulated eating than struggling in the moment with food decisions. What do I mean by “struggling”? I mean using your best self—the cognitive part of your brain that knows what is healthy, the memory of all your unhappy experiences with unwanted eating, the incentives of your personal goals for fitness and well-being, the wise self-mother who wants to nurture you, your commonsense that knows you’re hurting yourself—to battle disordered thinking that so seductively and manipulatively tries...

Need one more reason to s-l-o-w d-o-w-n y-o-u-r e-a-t-i-n-g? According to the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, eating fast reduces the release of hormones which help regulate appetite. Makes sense. Eating quickly is a learned behavior. The natural way to eat is to chew thoroughly and taste food so that your body can respond to what and how much you’re eating. Eating quickly is nothing more than a bad habit. In fact, compared to sitting with intense emotions and changing irrational beliefs about food, eating, and weight, it’s, well, a piece of cake. What I’m saying is that it is one of the easier behaviors to change. So what prevents you from slowing down and eating at a more leisurely pace? The fact that most speed eating is unconscious and automatic. You’re so used to gobbling up food and paying so little attention to your actions, that you don’t even...

Keeping in mind that some 50-70% of our weight may be genetically predetermined (Rethinking Thin—The New Science of Weight Loss and the Myths and Realities of Dieting, Kolata, 2007), survey studies identify that a number of behaviors slim people do that keep them that way. Although I could quibble with one or two findings, the point is that biology is not destiny and that there are folks with some of the most challenging weight-related DNA on the planet who manage to stabilize weight at a comfortable level and still enjoy eating and life. Dr. John Foreyt, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Baylor College of Medicine, maintains that people who remain thin “are eternally vigilant with daily or weekly weighing, they monitor calorie intake and they’re highly active exercising at least 60 minutes a day.” Hmm, so what of the many “normal” eaters I’ve met, whether they’ve ever had an...

A message board (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/foodandfeelings) member asked me to blog about cravings, compulsions, and addictions. Here’s my take. Over recent decades, scientific research has concluded that brain chemistry dictates far more of our behavior than we had previously thought. Alternately, it also stresses that we still retain free will and, fortunately, that changing behavior can modify brain chemistry. When you hear the seductive voice of leftover birthday cake calling to you from the refrigerator two rooms away, can’t stop obsessing about a watch you found on E-bay that you don’t need and in no way can afford, or feel the repeated stab of yearning for your old flame who was bad through and through, what’s going on? When you crave a food, biology is often at work—your body is triggered by low blood sugar or surging hormones or has a neurotransmitter imbalance and you seek food to alter your mood. What of...

I’ve had many conversations with clients (with friends and acquaintances too) who aren’t really sure what behaviors are appropriate around food. Small wonder. Fearing it smacks of dieting, they don’t know if any restriction of food is kosher or wonder if overeating due to stress means they’re abusing food. Even in the realm of exercise, they’re unsure of how much is enough. Although there are no hard and fast answers to these questions, there are ways to think these issues through effectively. Let’s take the question of whether it’s ever okay to consciously rein in your eating. Of course it is. If you’ve been overeating on vacation, dining out, hosting house guests, or over the holidays, it’s fine/normal/natural/healthy to be aware of it and cut back for a while. What you want to avoid is extremes, feeling deprived, and making a negative judgment about yourself or your eating. So you might...

The #1 effort that makes the difference between staying stuck in disregulated eating and climbing—and staying—out of it is what you do in the moments when you have a choice to make about food. Shall I eat or not? Shall I eat this or that? Shall I continue eating or stop now? Here are a few tips to help you make smarter choices. First off, remember that you must struggle in the moment to change your habits. You must do the new, healthy behavior more than the old, unhealthy behavior to transform your overall eating patterns. It’s not enough to do the old behavior sometimes and the new behavior other times. Shifting back and forth will only keep you stuck. When you’re in the throws of making choices, whether we’re talking a lengthy debate with yourself or a split-second decision, you need simple techniques for making the wisest move. Make up...

It’s important to know how much variety you want in your eating. Some people are perfectly happy eating the same few dishes over and over. Other people would be bored to tears having the same meal more than once in a week. Recognizing your need for variety or sameness can make the difference between enjoying food and engaging in unwanted eating because you feel dissatisfied. I have a friend who rotates three different lunches every week—tuna, turkey or chicken salad. That’s what she enjoys eating mid-day. And she pretty much eats the same thing for breakfast and her evening snack because she loves having a routine of healthy, satisfying foods. I know other people who live on chicken or chicken and fish and others who don’t care what they have for dinner as long as it’s some type of red meat. Many people, in fact, find pleasure in eating the same...

One of the biggest problems in becoming a “normal” eater is working at it for a while, then giving up and going back to mindless eating or dieting. If you stop and start, no wonder you feel as if you aren’t getting very far. No innate defect is preventing your success, however. Rather, you’re underestimating what you need to do to change. You’ve been to school and know that gaining proficiency in a subject takes focused attention for months or years, but generally this isn’t the mindset you use for learning to eat “normally.” Instead, you dabble at acquiring skills, become overwhelmed at what you don’t know and can’t do, feel disappointed, believe the process won’t work for you, and give up. Better to tell yourself, It will take time to become highly skilled, so I guess I’ll have to hunker down, put “normal” eating in the forefront and make it...

Isn’t it amazing how faced with a food decision, all your finest motivation and most ardent desire to care for yourself often fly right out the window? To combat this problem, I recommend that you anticipate and write down what you want to say to yourself in potentially difficult eating situations so you won’t be at a loss for words and forget how abusing food is not what you really want to do. Here’s how. On one side of a file card, put the rules of “normal” eating. On the other side, develop a mantra or set of words or phrases that will reach you when you’re about to make decisions about eating or weight. Jot down some thoughts for the next time you think that weighing yourself would be a grand idea, even though you know that whatever the scale says will cause a negative ripple effect. Compose a few...

Dining alone—at home or in a restaurant—often triggers unwanted eating, but it need not be problematic if you can identify what’s bothering you and come up with effective solutions. Change your attitude and you may even learn to enjoy eating solo. If you’re uncomfortable eating alone, acknowledge this fact. Maybe you believe you should feel okay and therefore, try to deny your discomfort. Think about it: How do you feel about eating by yourself at home or in a restaurant? If you’re used to keeping busy, eating solo can be a jarring experience because you’re all alone with your thoughts—and your food. Although eating is often a social experience, in the end it’s an isolated me-with-me occasion because the socializing actually has nothing to do with the food (unless someone is feeding you!). First off, then, stop thinking that eating should be a social experience, because this is not necessarily true....

There are many wonderful new books and websites to help disregulated eaters and the people who treat them. Although I haven’t read the titles listed below, I recommend them based on what I know about them and their authors. If you’ve read any of them, feel free to comment in the space below this blog and please encourage others to visit these websites and read these books. Look for them at http://www.bulimia.com/.   When I was recovering, I tried to read as much as I could about how to move beyond my eating problems and what I needed to do to recover. An insight here, a new perspective there, it all adds up and moves you forward. And, remember, as each of us recovers, we’re reshaping cultural norms about eating and weight and working toward building a society that has a more natural, saner, comfortable relationship with food.   JUST TELL...

Recently I was chatting with a friend who complained that she was looking to lose weight, but was frustrated that she couldn’t shake off any more pounds. She reported cutting portions and making healthier food choices and paying more attention to her appetite. For a moment, there seemed like little she could do to improve her habits—until she mentioned being careful during the week, but eating junk food with her boyfriend which he brought over on the weekend. It’s easy to fall prey to this pattern. On work days, you may forced into a regular feeding schedule with limited food choices, whereas, on weekends, you have more free time at home and are surrounded by food. Or making your own food choices as a stay-home-alone parent on weekdays, you may be faced with a partner’s preferences on weekends. Even without kids, weekends generally include eating activities—dinners out, get-togethers, and parties—which may...

Oprah says she’s seen the light—that diets don’t work, that punishing herself for being fat and overeating is exactly the wrong thing to do, that instead of hating her food problems, she needs to value them as a tool to teach her how to live her best life. Let’s hope that Geneen Roth’s May 12 appearance on Oprah helped switch on the light for Oprah’s entire viewing audience. And that it also gets Geneen Roth’s newest book, WOMEN, FOOD AND GOD, read and reread by disregulated eaters everywhere. Roth’s books were a turning point in my battles with food. How long had I been struggling, you ask. Since always. As a skinny kid, my mother had to trick me into eating by convincing me that my mouth was a tunnel and the food-on-a-spoon a choo choo train. However, not long after, there she was buying me clothes in the chubby department...

Safe to say that most of us have a typical eating schedule whether we realize it or not. Hopefully, it’s an intentional, mindful pattern, but it may also develop without much thought—when the ice cream truck rings its bell or when you stroll by Starbucks. Do you set your own schedule with an eye toward hunger, health, and satisfaction, or have you simply fallen into eating at certain times, well, just because? The answer to this question may help determine your weight. According to Prevention Magazine (March 2009), not only what or why you eat, but when you eat has a strong impact on healthy weight maintenance. Want to guess which kinds of people do better at keeping the number on the scale steady? Through a study of 3,607 women and men, the Karolinska Institute in Sweden determined that people who eat consistently at the same time every day without missing...

I’m often asked, “How often should I eat?” and this is a subject that frequently crops up on my message board (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/foodandfeelings). It’s an important question lacking a one-size-fits-all answer. When people ask me how often they should eat, I know immediately that they are looking for an answer in the wrong place—outside themselves—rather than reflecting internally on what is right for them because the only person I can answer for is me! How often you want to (not should) eat depends on your lifestyle, hunger and activity level, interest in food, and its availability. Some people love having three meals and three snacks a day. Other folks (like me) don’t like to be hungry or full and have multiple food encounters during the day without counting. As a writer and therapist with a home office, I can take frequent breaks and have foods I love readily available. My husband generally...

If you want to put yourself in the right frame of mind for eating, try a meditation beforehand. Don’t let the word scare you. A meditation can be anything you focus your physical and mental attention on. By saying aloud the message you want to program into yourself right before eating, you increase your potential for responding to it while you’re eating, thereby heightening your awareness to better connect to appetite signals. Here are a few ideas but, please, feel free to create what suits you, because your own words will speak most passionately to your heart. “I am relaxed and peaceful and anticipate enjoying a glorious meal. I will choose foods to enjoy, then savor them. I will honor my body by giving it as much nourishment as it needs and as much pleasure as I want. I will listen to my appetite and trust it to tell me when...

Often I speak with clients who are beginning to make food choices which feel right to them, except that they’re severely self-conscious and uncomfortable about them. If this happens to you, it’s important to learn how to stand up for your food decisions and not cave to external pressure, real or perceived. Remember, if you’re not eating foods you enjoy, you’re going to have a heap of trouble following the rules of “normal” eating. This problem plays out in three ways. The first is in the when of eating which might seem inappropriate to others. When I began trying to eat “normally,” I carried around food everywhere to assure myself that it would be available whenever I felt I needed it. I once ate an apple at intermission in the lobby of a Broadway show and a tuna fish sandwich in the bathroom of a bar in Vermont. Though I still...

My message board members have once again raised an interesting issue, and I thank them for keeping my head well stocked with bloggable subjects. The topic this time is the difference between dieting and healthy or nutritious eating. How can you distinguish them? How can you make healthy food choices most of the time and not feel as if you’re on a restrictive diet? As one board member points out, we’re all on some sort of diet. The problem is that diet has two meanings: the way we eat and a way to eat to lose weight. Stop and think about that. When you use the word, which definition do you mean? Can’t you follow a way of eating without being on a diet? I believe you can. It’s all in your perspective. You can follow formal or informal food guidelines—eat whole grains, fruits, and vegetables, eat small meals often throughout...

Starting out on the path to “normal” eating, you may be uncertain about what the journey entails. You expect you’ll be changing attitudes about and behavior around food, and may think that’s all you’ll be doing. The truth is that going from disregulated to regulated eating is a long, complex, process that requires a shift in numerous aspects of your life, and no one achieves complete recovery without undergoing an enormous, positive transformation. Conversely, without such an overhaul, you will never reach your eating goals. Here are some changes which lie ahead. You will have to acknowledge that moving from chronic dieting and/or overeating to “normal” eating is a lengthy process. It will not happen overnight. Plan on many months to a few years. It will not be an easy process. For many, it will be the hardest thing you ever do in your life. Changes are not only behavioral, but...

For 30 years I’ve been teaching people to slow down while they’re eating. It seems like common sense. After all, what’s the big rush? How often are we really (really, really) so harried and hurried that we can’t take time to enjoy food? Fast eating used to be just a bad habit. Now science is ringing the alarm bell and warning us that eating quickly and past full puts us at risk for becoming overweight. According to a study published October 21, 2008 in the British Medical Journal, folks who both eat quickly and until full have a three-fold risk of becoming overweight compared to people who eat more slowly and stop before fullness. The study included 3,000 Japanese adults, males and females ages 30-69. It focused on the speed with which they ate and whether they stopped before or after fullness, then correlated these activities with their BMI (Body Mass...

One night as I was heading for the kitchen cabinet containing the fat-free chocolate chip meringues I usually enjoy while watching the 11:00 news, I realized they weren’t what I was in the mood for. Usually they hit the spot and I was surprised that my body was saying, “Sweets, yuck. Go get yourself some protein.” So I had a yummy chunk of cheddar cheese and boy did it ever hit the spot. Those moments reminded me that we can become so stuck in food routines that we tune out what our bodies really want. Although we don’t know exactly what factors go into producing a strong craving for a particular food or food group, we have a pretty good idea of the influences: hunger level, hormones, foods eaten earlier in the day, activity level, mood, blood sugar, and what’s available, to name several. It’s natural to slip into food routines—a...

When a message board member questioned the difference between “normal” and healthy eating, I browsed through my blogs and was surprised I hadn’t blogged on the subject. What an important one it is. “Normal” and healthy eating are not the same, but each has tremendous value. “Normal” eating means being guided by appetite: eating when hungry, making satisfying choices, eating with awareness and enjoyment, and stopping when full or satisfied. The focus is internal, on responding to body signals. When you eat “normally,” you use instinct and judgment together to reach a goal of having a satisfying food experience. On the other hand, healthy eating, or what I’d call eating for nutritional value, has a goal of consuming foods that are beneficial for your body in terms of disease prevention, optimal health, and longevity. Nutritional eating is externally focused, ie, reading labels, considering fat, sugar and salt content, forgoing processed foods,...

I don’t usually blog about weight, but here’s some great advice for holiday eating and sanity from an article entitled, “Can you enjoy the season without weight gain?” by Gabriella Boston (Sarasota Herald-Tribune, 12/16/15, 13E). No preaching, I promise!“It’s better to eat normally during the day [of a cocktail party] and not go to the party starving,” says Anne Mauney, RD, “adding that it’s hard to “slow down and eat mindfully when you’re starving.” Instead, she recommends eating a big salad with lots of protein during the day because cocktail party fare is usually carbs and sugars.“Mindful eating includes noticing the smells, flavors, textures and colors of the food as well as eating more slowly. Along with more enjoyment, mindful eating has been associated with a better ability to self-regulate,” says Rebecca Scritchfield, RD. Scritchfield suggests alternating between alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages and showing up hungry for a sit-down dinner or...

Are you a habitual multitasker? More to the point regarding your food problems, how does it affect your ability to eat mindfully? I am now able to eat, and by that I mean eat “normally,” while doing any activity because for many years I practiced eating without distraction until eating mindfully became ingrained. However, you will never get to this point unless you eat with a sole focus on this one activity for quite a long while. In his book, The Organized Mind, Daniel Levitin, a McGill University professor of psychology and behavioral neuroscience, tells us why doing several activities at one time does not work: “We now know that the brain doesn’t multitask. Rather, the brain shifts rapidly from one thing to the next. That causes us to not be able to focus attention on any one thing, and this dividing of our attention makes us less efficient. The reason...

Dissatisfaction with food may happen for any number of reasons. Understanding the your feelings when this happens can lead you to choosing a healthy response.. You don’t have to be satisfied with food, but you can be satisfied with your actions around it. It’s not unusual for disregulated eaters to feel dissatisfied with a meal and later binge on food they enjoy. Or even binge on the food you’re not enjoying! This behavior sounds bizarre, but makes lots of sense when you realize that for many disregulated eaters eating is the way they deal with uncomfortable feelings. So, say, you’re out to dinner and order some dish you think you’ll like but it doesn’t hit the spot, or you are a dinner guest and have to eat what you’re served which is about the last thing you like to eat. How does that lead to a binge? What happens is that...

An article about changing the brain (The brain set free by Laura Sanders, SCIENCE NEWS, 8/11/12) offers more evidence for some of my most persistent advice: If you want to eat differently, you have to keep practicing new behaviors. You can’t just do something a few times and decide you’re a failure. Practice changes your brain. Before getting to how your brain changes with practice, here’s a description of how it begins laying down neural pathways in your earliest days. At first there is a rush of information into our newly formed brains. Slowly connections start to form and strengthen between nerve cells. “In time, these brain connections crystallize, forming indelible patterns” and “In a fully set brain, signals fly around effortlessly, making commonplace tasks short work” as the brain becomes “a master of efficiency” and what scientists called “petrified.” They talk about “The potential for this metamorphosis” as the brain...

At a party this summer, I ended up engaging in a hazard of my profession, watching people eat. There were a variety of celebrators at the party—mixed gender, from all classes and walks of life. An interesting crowd but, sadly, not a group of mindful eaters. First, I noticed the size of the portions taken from the buffet. Plates were medium-sized and most people heaped them so high and full that all I could see was food on them, no plate. I will say that there was plenty of variety on each plate, a bit of everything. Seated at large tables (mine happened to be right by the buffet), I was able to observe what my table members did and those going back and forth seeking more food. Almost to a person, every person at my table cleaned their plates, which surprised me. The food, truth be told, was okay but...

Most of us grow up believing what our parents believe, but we don’t think of these belief as belonging to our parents. We think they belong to us. In truth, they belonged to our parents and were passed down to us automatically. Many of these beliefs are healthy and rational, but an equal number may be detrimental to our health and mental health. Many dysregulated eaters have a set of beliefs which simply are not useful or beneficial in life, however they keep on believing them—and acting based upon them--as if they were truths. Sometimes these beliefs worked for your parents and sometimes they didn’t. You adopted them even though they were helpful and didn’t make you or your folks happy or successful. Here are some I’ve come across in my clinical travels. One is about productivity, that you must be busy and be doing something meaningful every minute of the...

It seems as if every few years or so a new approach to losing weight pops up and markets its way into mainstream culture. The glycemic index (GI), focusing on blood sugar levels and carbohydrates, has been in vogue for some time. Now, however, studies tell us that using the GI is not a one-size-fits-all tool for eating, working for some people but not others. An article in the June 2011 TUFTS UNIVERSITY & NUTRITION HEALTH LETTER, Findings cast doubt on glycemic-index appetite effects, explains how the glycemic index may not impact appetite as its promoters would have us think. A Netherlands’ Unilever Research and Development study led by Harry Peters, PhD, “tested the theory that low-glycemic index (GI) carbohydrates that digest more slowly and have more gradual effects on insulin and glucose levels might combat hunger better than high-GI foods.” Peters team found previous studies of GI and appetite inconclusive....

Although my primary focus is to help disregulated eaters connect to internal appetite cues, that’s hard to do without recognizing how external cues impact food consumption. Some tips from a NUTRITION ACTION HEALTHLETTER (5/11) article entitled “Under the influence: how external cues make us overeat” by Brian Winsink, Ph.D. Before detailing Winsink’s advice, please note that the word “make” in the title of the article is nonsense. Nothing makes us overeat; rather cues act as triggers and food seducers. So, don’t give up your free will. Nothing makes you overeat but you! Moreover, some of Winsink’s advice is the antithesis of what I teach about eating “normally,” so you’ll have to figure out how to—or even whether to—follow his suggestions. If they aid “normal” eating, use them. If not, ignore them. Rather than keep food within reach (say, on your desk at work or next to you while you’re watching TV)...

Some of you may have heard of leptin and some of you may be hearing the word for the first time. Leptin is a hormone produced by fat cells that signals your brain that you’ve had enough food. If you’re serious about understanding appetite and weight-related body chemistry, here’s the quick-and-dirty on leptin. According to an ENVIRONMENTAL NUTRITION (February 2011) article, Lessons About Leptin, Weight and Your Eating Environment, when you eat more calories than your body needs, they are stored in fat cells as fat. As fat is socked away, your leptin levels elevate and are released into your bloodstream, alerting your brain that you’ve consumed enough nutrients. Conversely, by losing weight through reducing fat stores, your leptin levels plummet, signaling your brain to believe that your body is in starvation mode which increases food-seeking behavior. Throughout history, this balance of stored calories evolved to help us take in the...

When is it all going to click? I hear this question a lot. Clients and message board members want to know when they’re going to consistently and automatically engage in “normal” eating behaviors—stop eating when satisfied, prevent a binge, feel full but not purge, keep going to the gym even when they’re busy, or not regain weight they struggled hard to lose. The answer to this question may not be what you want to hear. It’s natural to want the effort you put into “normal” eating and growing mentally healthy around food and the scale to pay off. But, in my experience, troubled eaters can get so hyper-focused on when things are going to get easier and “click,” that they become distracted from the hard work that leads to this eventual transformation. The fact is that the click comes at the end of a long, nose-to-the grindstone process. It doesn’t happen...

Eating problems can be exacerbated by a lack of sensory stimulation in general, that is, by using food as your primary outlet for sensual delight. Unwittingly, you may rely on taste, only one of your five senses, rather than using them all to increase intensity and joy in life. If so, by engaging all five senses, you may reduce unwanted eating. If you eat from boredom or to de-stress, you’re ignoring ways in which your other senses—smell, sight, hearing, and touch—could better help you amp up or chill out. One reason for this dependence is that you’ve fallen into a rut: food is cheap, accessible, and requires no thinking or creativity. With a little inventiveness and energy, however, you can learn to get all your senses working for you at maximum efficiency. Let’s start with smell. There may be no scientific evidence that aromatherapy promotes relaxation, but certain aromas seem to...

We all know that there’s a rational part of ourselves and another part that’s got its own silly, and sometimes harmful, ideas. These aspects of self often battle with each other over food and other decisions: rationality asserts one thing while irrationality says quite another. This is a natural and inevitable process that we go through in making choices. What determines health over lack of it is which thought we let win each skirmish. Clients often confess that they did think about stopping eating when full, going to the gym, saying no to an unreasonable demand, standing up for themselves when they’ve been hurt, etc., but then this “little voice” told them to finish what’s on their plate, let the gym slide for another day, cave to the demand, or remain silent to avoid an argument. If we think of the first voice as the rational one and the second as...

The idea for this blog came from a syndicated column in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune by Amy Alkon, “Advice Goddess.” If you’re not acquainted with her, she offers a witty take on relationships and romance along with some darned good practical advice. In a March column, she shares her wisdom about obsession and the brain’s reward center. Her explanation for how we become entrenched in unwanted behavior is enlightening. Responding to a reader infatuated with an unattainable lover, Alkon writes, “Every time you moon over this woman, you’re giving your brain’s motivation and reward centers a hit of the feel-good neurotransmitter dopamine. In doing that, you’re repeatedly engaging your brain in reward-seeking without reward-satisfaction, and revving an attraction into an obsession.” She goes on to quote anthropologist Helen Fisher, author of Why We Love: “When a reward is delayed, dopamine-producing cells in the brain increase their work, pumping out more of this...

The day following a holiday feast or any major food event deserves a blog promoting reflection. Print this one out and save it to read after every occasion when you’re eating outside your routine. It will help you reflect on your progress with “normal” eating skills. Better yet, it will remind you of the nonjudgmental mindset needed to continue recovery. First, identify the part of you that is interested in your behavior but has no intention of judging it. That might take a minute or two, but keep at it until you’re there. If that mindset seems elusive, relax your body, take a few deep breaths, and return to seeking that calm, compassionate place in you that is curious about your eating and wants the best for you, but is without criticism. When you’ve found that sweet spot, stop and smile. Be happy that there’s a part of yourself that is...

I recently read something that stopped me in my tracks: “Of course, when there are problems, people love to blame the thing being used instead of the person doing the using. This thinking is fed by the damaging contention that addiction is a ‘disease.’ Multiple sclerosis is a disease. You can’t decide to not have multiple sclerosis. You can decide to stop engaging in some behaviors.” Wow, huh! Here are my musings on the subject. First is that we need to think of “addiction” as a medical condition rather than as a disease. As long as we’re choosing terms, let’s go for one that connotes empowerment. We can’t choose whether to have an addiction, but we can choose how we respond to it. Next, as an avid follower of the scientific debate over whether or not sugar is addictive, I’m convinced by current evidence that it definitely is not. Instead, blame...

A couple months back, there was an intense discussion on my Food and Feelings message board ( http://groups.yahoo.com/group/foodandfeelings) about the discomfort of feeling full. This is what the diet industry has done to us: twisted a positive into a negative by implying that the sensation of taking in adequate nourishment is bad. If you’re going to eat “normally,” it’s time to view fullness as a welcome occurrence. For most of human history—right up until the 20th century—filling your stomach with food was considered a positive act. More than that, it was the most effective one you could engage in to keep yourself alive and well. At the end of a meal, folks smiled with satisfaction, sighed with pleasure, and patted their tummies contentedly. That is what fullness should be about. Those smiles and pats signify that a basic human need has been pleasantly met and that it’s time to move on...

I get preachy about eating without distraction because doing so makes all the difference between mindful and mindless eating and, ultimately, unwanted eating. Because of my own transformation from troubled to “normal” eater, I know that attending exclusively to food speeds up change. Now, here’s proof from the scientific community. Jeffrey Brunstrom, a researcher in behavioral nutrition at the University of Bristol in England, is the senior author of a study on eating and distraction. For his research, he had 22 volunteers play solitaire while eating a meal and another 22 eat the same meal without any distractions. Subjects were not told the focus of the study which was to assess post-meal fullness, the quantity of food eaten 30 minutes after the meal, and participant success in remembering what they had eaten. Care to guess the outcome? The solitaire-playing eaters—no surprise!—did worse at recalling what they’d eaten and felt substantially less...

I remember when I used to fear Halloween—not because of spooky ghosts and goblins, but because of what I thought of as the terrifying temptation of candy. This fear began in adolescence and continued until I was well into my journey to “normal” eating. Here are some new findings on eating candy, which may help you be less afraid this Halloween. A PSYCHOLOGY TODAY article entitled, The science of willpower: secrets for self-control without suffering, by Kelly McGonigal has some interesting thoughts on eating sweets although I don’t subscribe to the concept of willpower. “People who regularly eat candy live longer than those who don't. A multi-decade study from the Harvard School of Public Health showed that modest candy consumption is associated with the greatest benefit, but even those with a daily habit lived longer than those who never indulged. This benefit could not be explained by other factors such as...

Let’s face it, we all have our own eat-i-o-syncracies, our unique eating habits that are not only particular to us but sometimes downright peculiar. That’s okay. They’re nothing to be ashamed of and even may make eating more pleasurable. They sure do for me. This subject came up when I was talking with a client who’s trying her darndest to eat vegan. I know how difficult that can be, as my husband enjoys following a mostly vegetarian regimen. First off, that means he often eats foods that others don’t (tempeh anyone?) and doesn’t eat foods that they do (such as turkey at Thanksgiving). Second, he’s very concerned about how food is prepared (the amount of salt, type of oil used for cooking, etc.). Third, people think of him as a very fussy (albeit extremely healthy) eater. My client had a similar approach to food, but felt uneasy burdening food preparers and...

If your beliefs about eating and food are unhealthy, your attitudes and behaviors will be too. That’s a fact. This means that if you want to be a “normal” eater, you have to think like one which involves sorting through your beliefs about food/eating/weight to make sure that they’re rational and healthy. Ten or so healthy core beliefs will do you just fine. To create a new belief system, read my book, THE RULES OF “NORMAL” EATING, which teaches you how to distinguish between rational and irrational beliefs and turn the former into the latter. Use the beliefs in the book to create your own set of 10 for eating. If you already know how to reframe beliefs, make a list of your own about eating/food/weight to form the operating system for your relationship with food and your body. Look for beliefs which underlie others, ones that program you to do...

One of my recurrent fantasies has been to have daily contact with my clients, book readers, message board members, and blog audience, and I’m excited to share with you that I’ve finally found a way to do it. I’ve created a confidential, free Facebook-only app called APPetite which will keep a virtual me near you every minute of every day. Well, perhaps that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but APPetite will place my ideas, suggestions and advice within easy reach whenever you want them. APPetite is the first Facebook application to help you create a positive relationship with food through a private Facebook journal and scheduled coaching prompts. There are three components to APPetite. First, in-the-moment advice is emailed to you daily via Facebook to keep you motivated and get you over the food bumps in your day. After completing a confidential profile about your eating habits, challenges and goals, you...

I love when I get ideas for blogs from clients. This one came from a remark a client made about finally enjoying food, rather than merely inhaling or consuming it. She was deriving pleasure—real pleasure— from the joys food has to offer rather than throwing herself into eating for all the wrong reasons. My client’s take is that she was so absorbed with the act of eating—of filling what she called her bottomless pit--that she never really focused enough on the actual food. Food was a means to an end, nothing more. Here are some of the ways the act of eating derails us. When eating is something to do when you have nothing to do or when you want to put off a task you perceive as unpleasant. When eating is a way of avoiding internal distress to make feelings seem less intense. In this day and age, eating has...

Remember how teachers cautioned you to keep your eyes on your own paper during a test? They did so because they wanted you to develop skills and knowledge on your own. If you don’t do so already, it’s time to apply the same approach to eating. Everybody seems to have an opinion these days on what you should or shouldn’t eat—your neighbor, doctor, mother, father, brother, friend, cousin, the supermarket check-out clerk, your third-grader, and everyone you have more than a five-minute chat with. Some days you may feel so bombarded with advice that you want to lock yourself inside the refrigerator just to have a quiet moment to think. Forget such drastic measures. All you need to do is develop a “my own plate” mentality and resist peeking at what others are eating. Instead, ask yourself what you feel like having. How much food is enough for you? How does...

I often hear clients and "Food and Feelings" message board members complain that they do fine eating at home, but that everything falls apart when they go out to eat. This is likely due to failing to manage what you can when dining out. So here are my ideas for being mindful and proactive when you’re eating outside your home. First off, give yourself credit for improving your eating at home. Too often, disregulated eaters forget that they do many things well because they’re too busy focusing on what they’re not doing as well as they’d like. So, stop and recognize the progress you’ve made. Next, consider that it makes sense that you’d do better where you perceive yourself in charge of all the elements in a situation—you’re the one doing the food planning, marketing, cooking, meal scheduling, and serving which makes it easier to make sure at each step along...

Most of my clients for binge-eating disorder are and have been women, but that doesn’t mean men don’t have similar problems. Women enter therapy more often and are more appearance conscious than men. But, take note, males can be binge-eaters too.After reading “Binge Eating Among Men Steps Out of the Shadows” by Abby Ellin (NY Times, 8/13/12), I wondered how many of you have male partners, colleagues, brothers, spouses, friends, or fathers who binge. As the article points out, men are expected to eat a lot and aren’t as self-conscious about it as women. In fact, chowing down may be seen as a manly thing to do. However, when you’re consuming many hundreds or even thousands of calories at one sitting and feel out of control around food, that’s nothing near normal eating. As therapist and former binge-eater Andrew Walen points out in the article, that’s about “numbness and self-loathing.” He...